Today, I want to share with you a post all about gel manicures. If you have visited my site over the years, I am sure you will have seen my rather frequent posts about my gel manicures. For me, they are a no-brainer because they are long-lasting and really help my brittle nails stay intact. However, the last time I was getting my nails done, the tech who I normally used had switched out all of her products because of bad press around the brand she previously used. That then sparked a conversation about the safety concerns and I fell down a rabbit hole of research
The truth is, it seems that as a whole, gel manicures using UV technology is still too new to understand the lasting health implications from excessive UV light. That in itself, I found pretty worrying. The more I researched, I found two halves of the argument. One side said that it was nothing to worry about because of the amount of time your hands are under the UV on a sporadic basis. Then on the other hand, there is a group of people that strongly believe that even a short amount of UV exposure could lead to serious health implications, including cancer.
So, I began researching my own gel manicure kit. I primarily use The Gel Bottle Inc and have done so for a number of years. The products themselves were a different task for a different day. What I really wanted to look into was the lamp itself. I wanted to learn more about the frequencies, testing information and everything else that was published about the lamp.
However, the only thing that I could find on their site was a technical specification sheet. Which to mere mortals like me, was completely incomprehensible. But to be honest, it wasn’t just The Gel Bottle that had a bamboozling specification sheet. As I looked into other brands, many of them also had similar documents. All of which are complete gobbledygook to end users. I couldn’t even imagine that people who work in the field full time would be able to look at one of the specification sheets and understand the language.
But one thing that I really wanted to see from any of the big gel brands out there. By that I mean the likes of The Gel Bottle, Gelish, OPI and many more. I really wanted to see a kind of declaration. Outlining the potential risks associated with gel manicures and what the potential health implications could be. Alas, I have never seen a single beauty brand comment on these things. To a degree, I do understand. Because why would these brands want to share information that was potentially scaremongering when there isn’t clinically tested information. However, I feel like these brands have a duty of care to their customers.
As always, I would love to hear from you guys on this subject. Am I blowing things out of proportion, or should there be more information available to people so that they can make an informed decision before getting their next gel manicure?
