By Aria Bendix
Such cell damage "is just one step along the pathway to cancer," said Dr. Julia Curtis, an assistant professor at the University of Utah dermatology department, who wasn't involved in the new research.
The study didn't look at real people, however: The researchers exposed cells derived from humans and mice to UV light from nail dryers. They observed that after 20 minutes, 20% to 30% of the cells had died. After three consecutive 20-minute sessions, 65% to 70% of cells had died.
Previous studies have linked only a few instances of skin cancer to gel manicures. A 2020 analysis identified two women in the U.S. who developed melanoma on the backs of their hands from 2007 to 2016. Both had gotten gel manicures for years. Overall, however, the researchers determined that that type of manicure — which involves applying a gel polish that must then set under UV lamps — had little to no association with cancer.
"At this point, I would recommend or advise people to just weigh the risk," said one of the new study’s authors, Maria Zhivagui, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego. "Understand what this is doing. There is damage at the DNA level. We don’t know if it’s carcinogenic."
Scientists will need to study the effects of UV nail dryers in actual humans before they can make definitive conclusions about cancer risk, she added. Both Zhivagui and Curtis said the process might take 10 more years, given the slow pace of research.
"UV nail lamps didn’t really get popular until about the 2000s, I would say, so making that cause and effect can be very difficult," Curtis said.
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