Do your nails really even have to breath? We consulted celebrity manicurist, Erica Marton of Red Market Salon in Miami, for the answer.
Others that have breathable nail polish options include UK-brand Nailberry's L'Oxygen (14.50 Euros, .uk), Acquarella ($16, Acquarella) and Sally Hansen's Smooth & Perfect Color + Care ($6, SallyHansen). The line includes a spectrum of milky and vibrant hues ($8.99, ORLY). Additionally, ORLY dropped a new line of Breathable nail polishes (totally wearing Rehab right now, btw), this past July. The brand offers over 100 options to customers, including glossy lacquers ($16, Inglot) and soft mattes ($17, Inglot). Look up any of these 3-free and 5-free brands next time you’re hunting for a new nail color: Butter London, CND, Deborah Lippmann, Essie, Estée Lauder, Hard Candy, Smith & Cult, M.A.C.For example, INGLOT's O2M Breathable Nail Enamel has been utilizing this technology since 2013. There are tons of nail polishes out there that don’t have these ingredients that are not only known to be hazardous, but aren’t actually necessary to give you great color and finish. However, as more beauty brands progress, they’ve moved to leave out all five of these chemicals. The “toxic trio” are the first three in this list, with many brands leaving them out of their nail polish formulas. It’s also a neurotoxin, which can cause seizures if ingested (nail biters, looking at you!) and liver damage when absorbed into the skin.
So what should you watch out for if you still want to paint your nails every color of the rainbow and NOT possibly give yourself cancer? Lots of progressive nail polish brands offering safer nail polishes will advertise their nail polish as 3-free or 5-free, meaning it’s made without any of these five known toxic chemicals: With the popularity of nail art and the growing sales of nail polish (Americans spend over $700 million on nail polish products a year), nail care is one of the most rapidly growing sectors of the beauty industry. You may believe that you’re fine because you don’t use nail polish very often, or you use it in such small quantities that it shouldn’t effect you, but in conjunction with the many other cosmetic and beauty products you do use on a daily basis, damage adds up.
In case you’ve been living under a rock (albeit a chip-free and fast-drying one), some of the long-term consequences of being around nail polish chemical fumes for prolonged periods of time include interference with reproductive hormones (which can lead to infertility and/or miscarriages), kidney and liver damage, and on a more immediate level, eye and throat irritation, dizziness, migraines, and dry, cracked skin. In light of some eye-opening NYT stories profiling the rather harrowing conditions of working in nail salons in New York City, it’s never been more pertinent than now as to why non-toxic nail polish is a must-have.