From MSN news Perfect Nails, Poisoned Women...

....The prevalence of respiratory and skin ailments among nail salon workers is widely acknowledged. More uncertain, however, is their risk for direr medical issues. Some of the chemicals in nail products are known to cause cancer; others have been linked to abnormal fetal development, miscarriages and other harm to reproductive health (Miscarriage).

... ‘They Cannot Breathe’

The walls of Dr. Charles Hwu’s second-story office in Flushing, Queens, are decorated with Chinese calligraphy, gifts from patients he has cared for from cradle to adulthood. Over his decades as an internist in this predominantly Asian enclave, Dr. Hwu has repeatedly encountered a particular set of conditions affecting otherwise healthy women.

“They come in usually with breathing problems, some symptoms similar to an allergy, and also asthma symptoms — they cannot breathe,” he said during a break between patients this winter. “Judging from the symptoms with these women, it seems that they are either smokers, secondhand smokers or asthma patients, but they are none of the above. They work for nail salons.”

In interviews with over 125 nail salon workers, airway ailments like those in Dr. Hwu’s office were ubiquitous. Many have learned to simply laugh them off — the nose that constantly bleeds, the throat that has ached every day since the manicurist started working.

In the nail salon she owned in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, Eugenia Colon spent years molding sometimes 30 sets of talonlike nails a day in a haze of acrylic powder, ignoring a persistent cough that grew more pronounced over time. She was found to have sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease, in her lungs. In scans, they appeared as if covered with granules of sand, streaked by tiny scars.

The doctor who diagnosed her condition asked Ms. Colon what she did for a living. When she told him, he was frank: As she beautified other women, she inhaled clouds of acrylic and other dust, tiny particles that gouged the soft tissue of her lungs.

“We made money off it, but was it worth it?” Ms. Colon, 52, now an aesthetician in a Manhattan spa. “It came with a price.”


Read more at MSN News link: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/perfect-nails-poisoned-workers/ar-BBjpnK3?ocid=mailsignoutmd
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