Skin Cancer: 24 Manicures Could Be Enough To Put You At Risk

Getting your nails done with a gel manicure just 24 times could be enough to put you at risk of skin cancer.

It's a shocking statistic and seems extreme considering the short period of time spent during manicures with your hands actually under the drying UV lights.

But experts have warned that anyone with a heightened risk of the disease should stick to air-drying nails, rather than expose themselves to even small amounts of the UVA and UVB rays used to harden gel nail varnish.

It's a difficult thing to measure as different salons' equipment emit varying levels of the rays, but new research has found that some of the stronger devices put nail clients at a seriously increased risk.

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According to Time Magazine, Dr Lyndsay Shipp from Georgia Regents University’s Medical College of Georgia and her colleagues measured the amount of irradiation from nail dryers at 16 nail salons in the US and found that most of the devices emit more UVA than UVB light - which is the cancer-causing rays that penetrate deep into the skin.

The team calculated that in some salons, just 24 visits was enough to severely increase your risk of getting skin cancer, while in others it could take up to 600 visits for there to be the same risk.

There have been mixed messages about the safety of gel manicures, with some experts saying the amount of time and the small area that the UV rays hit mean the risk is negligible.

But the light is the same found in tanning beds, which cause skin cancer, and there have been at least two cases in the US where women have experienced cancerous cells on their hands, linked to manicures.

Increasing warnings mean many of us are thinking twice about risking our health for the sake of shiny, long-lasting nail colour. Like tanning beds, gel manicures could soon be resigned to the dust heap of beauty treatment.s