‘Healthy’ nail salons: Proposed federal law could boost protections from chemicals for workers
The Mercury News (TNS)
After working for years in a nail salon, Lan Anh Truong started having strange symptoms: frequent headaches, coughing and red, irritated eyes.
One day, more than a decade ago, she even fainted at her Alameda, Calif., salon.
It never occurred to Ms. Truong that frequent exposure to chemicals used in nail polish and removers — first as a technician and then as a salon owner — could be causing her health problems until she made contact with Oakland-based Asian Health Services, whose staff formed the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative after noticing a pattern in the symptoms of salon workers.
After learning that her own symptoms and the health issues of other salon workers could be connected to the products she was using every day with clients, Ms. Truong became one of the first to join a growing movement to reduce exposure to hazardous chemicals in salons.
“You have to be aware,” she said of the health issues faced by salon workers. “You have to care.”
Now, the movement to make salons safer for the mostly young immigrant women who work in them may be getting a boost at the federal level. U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto last week introduced The Environmental Justice Right to Know Act.
If passed, their bill would direct the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to research ventilation in beauty salons and determine a healthy level of ventilation for workers.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences would be required to report to Congress on the long-term negative health effects of chemicals in beauty products. And the bill would require product manufacturers to provide safety information in multiple languages on their websites.
The proposed law is not just about nail salon workers. It also would require Spanish translations of safety and environmental information on pesticides used in agriculture. But the proposal would be a big boost to a years-long effort to make salons healthier workplaces.
“The ultimate solution is that manufacturers need to have healthy products,” said Julia Liou, chief deputy of administration for Asian Health Services and director of the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative.
California and Bay Area counties already have taken action. Last week, the state released guidelines for cities and counties to voluntarily implement programs to certify “healthy” nail salons that use safer products and properly ventilate their spaces, following the lead of Alameda, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.
Ms. Liou is encouraged by the new legislative support for the cause, but notes that until recently, there has been little government regulation to protect salon workers.
When Ms. Liou helped push for a bill in 2005 to regulate dibutyl pthalate, which is used in nail products and considered toxic by health experts, she said she watched at the state Capitol as beauty industry lobbyists battling the measure handed out goody-bags of cosmetics to legislative staffers. The bill was defeated.