When I went to the Green Living Show last month, I went there intending to buy only foodstuffs, and to learn new developments in the green industry. And while my take-home bag did contain an awesome poppy seed dressing from Rawfoodz, it also contained a bottle of shiny blue nail polish from Suncoat Girl, a container of 100% shea butter from Maiga, and one box of SmartKlean's non-detergent Laundry Ball (will probably review this sometime in the near future).
Buying the nail polish was a big deal for me, since I am actually against traditional nail polish. My mother loves painting her nails, and while I admit to liking the artistic aspect of the practice, as well as the beautiful colours, I can't quite get past the strong heady smell, or the fact that the chemicals in nail polish leach into your body. Nails might feel thick, but they're not impenetrable, so chemicals that are small enough to enter the pores in nails are also going into our bodies.
When I went to the Suncoat Girl booth, I was surprised that such a nail polish even existed. I was skeptical and told him my reasons for avoiding nail polish. He rebutted with chemistry. I suppose that whenever chemistry comes into the picture, I get extremely curious. I even opened up one of the bottles to see if its smell would make me almost-faint. I wouldn't say it's odourless, but it's almost odourless. My eyebrows rose in pleasant surprise. I ended up buying it, obviously, just to test it out for myself, and to answer the question, "Would I become a nail polish addict if this product was more readily available to me?"
So what are the facts? According to the bottle, the nail polish consists of the following ingredients:
-water
-acrylate copolymer
-polyurethane
-may contain any mixture of the following minerals, depending on the nail polish colour: mica, iron oxides, titanium dioxide, ferric ferrocyanide, chromium oxide or carmine
Acrylate copolymers are used in cosmetics as adhesives and are film-forming. According to the Environmental Working Group, acrylate polymers are safe for use in cosmetics. I don't like to take just anyone's word, and I don't know enough about the Environmental Working Group's credentials to judge whether this is true or not. The EWG's legal disclaimer says that their "ratings reflect potential health hazards but do not account for the level of exposure or individual susceptibility, factors which determine actual health risks, if any." In any case, it looks like the EWG doesn't have enough information in their public database regarding toxicity, so for now, I'm going to leave this ingredient in the "question mark zone".
Polyurethane is a synthetically-made polymer (plastic), which is basically a very large molecule composed of repeating structural units connected by chemical bonds. The EWG rates this ingredient as a low-hazard ingredient. Apparently, in some studies, polyurethane caused an increased cellular immune response in an experimental rat population, as well as respiratory problems and blood and liver tumor formations. However, my understanding is that these findings reflect a chemical's effect inside the body, whether it enters the body through ingestion, inhalation or absorption through the skin. The booth chemist from Suncoat Girl said that the size of the nail polish's molecules are larger than the pores on our nails, which rules out absorption through the nail's pores. So, unless you decide to eat or obsessively sniff the nail polish, perhaps this ingredient is safe.
As for minerals, my understanding is that these are also very large molecules, and therefore stay on the surface of the nail. They do not leach.
So, we're not all chemists, and maybe this mumbo jumbo is actually just mumbo jumbo. What you really want to know is whether I will turn into a nail polish addict, now that I've found a non-smelly alternative, right?
Here are my observations:
1) the first coat is fairly thin, so you will have to put another coating on to match the colour on the bottle
2) it does not smell (awesome deal-breaker!)3) you don't need to use nail-polish remover to take it off your nails; just soak in water for a minute and peel off (actually, I didn't even soak mine in water; I just peeled them off)
4) when it peels off, it peels off in one shot (as in, one tiny, intact plastic sheet)
5) the nail polish felt heavy on my nails
6) it didn't last for very long on my nails; it took about one day before the colour on the edges of my nails started to peel back
So, while I do think this nail polish is light years more awesome than traditional nail polish, which contain chemicals like formaldehyde and toluene (blegh!), I will stay a bare nails girl, methinks :p The main reason? I felt like my nails were suffocating. I think nails have to breathe to be healthy, and so, while having colour on my nails is now a possibility, I think I will only ever keep it on for special days and occasions.
