If you wish to have gorgeous-looking nails, gel polish should be the best bet for you. Besides being easy to apply, gel polish is the easiest to remove as it soaks off easily. In addition, gel polish looks amazing on your nails for a long time. Moreover, you have some of the best gel polish brands offering exciting gel polish colors to enhance your excitement quotient.
However, many people do not know or even care about the dangers of gel polish. The best point is that it can be minimized or even eliminated. Let us learn the dangers of gel polish that could help you choose the best gel polish for your nails.
Gel Polish – The Toxic Trio of Chemicals
While gel polish is all about chemicals, you should know which chemicals are bad for your nails and stay away from them. Here are three toxic chemicals that some cheap gel polish brands contain.
Formaldehyde: is a hardening agent but can cause cancer.
Toluene: can help the nails look smooth and shiny but cause nervous system problems.
Dibutyl Phthalate (DBP): can make your nails flexible and prevent cracking but is dangerous because it is responsible for creating reproductive issues.
The idea is that you should look at the gel polish ingredients and stay away from the gel polish colors that contain these three toxic chemicals.
Other Chemicals to Avoid
While the top three toxic chemicals are a strict NO when choosing gel polish, you should ensure that your gel polish ingredients do not contain the following chemicals. Many brands add these chemicals to enhance the polish’s fragrance levels, but it is quite unnecessary.
- Camphor can smell good but has risky side effects like increased heartbeat, flushed skin, slowed-down breathing, and enhanced perspiration. In addition, camphor in high doses is highly poisonous.
- Parabens can preserve your nails and keep them fresh for long but can cause cancer.
Chemicals – Not to Get Confused
Hydroxyethyl methacrylate, a polymer, can help adhesion and integrate between the base and topcoats after the polish cures fully. It is an essential ingredient of gel polish. Unfortunately, many people confuse this polymer with methyl methacrylate, a highly poisonous compound that can cause respiratory issues.
Hydroxyethyl methacrylate does not cause any adverse health issues. Some people can experience allergic reactions, but it should be normal. Hydroxyethyl methacrylate is safe to use on your nails. But if you have allergies, you can always use antihistamine creams to nullify the allergic reactions.
Dangers of UV/LED Lamps
Gel polish manicures need curing nails under a UV/LED lamp. It is unavoidable because there are no alternatives to UV/LED lamps. However, UV radiation is always bad for your skin and can cause cancer. So, should you stop using UV lamps? No, you should not because sunlight also emits UV light, and no one stops going out in the day.
The idea is to invest in the best-quality UV/LED lamps that are safer than the cheap lamps available on the market.
Choose the Best Gel Polish
Now that we know the dangers of gel polish let us look at how to choose the best gel nail polish colors for our nails.
The first thing is to look at the ingredients and ensure that the toxic trio of chemicals is absent from the list. Then, purchasing good quality gel polish brands ensures to exclude these dangerous chemicals, thereby making them safe to use.
One should invest in a good quality UV/LED lamp to prevent excessive exposure to UV radiation.
Once you have decided on non-toxic gel polish, it is better to go for a highly pigmented polish brand. It ensures that you do not need multiple coats on your nails. A low pigment will require a minimum of three to four coats to look good, but it can thicken your polish layer and increase the chances of damage.
It is better to look at the origin of your gel polish. Though many gel polish brands are made in China, it is always better to go for a European or American brand. This is because you never know what goes into a Chinese nail polish brand, even if you carefully go through the ingredients list.
The pricing can also be an issue. If you go for the international gel polish brands, they can be expensive because the costs include the shipping and logistics costs. Nevertheless, if the ingredients are safe, you should not mind spending more because you get high-quality gel polish colors.
Final Words
Though gel polish manicure is an excellent cosmetic feature, one should know the dangers of using cheap products. This blog should help you in this regard. You will make it a point to look at the ingredients and the country of origin before finalizing the purchase.