San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
State seeks to ban toxic chemical from nail polish
A dangerous chemical could be eliminated from nail polishes sold in California under a plan announced on Friday in San Francisco.
State regulators declared that the solvent known as toluene, which has been associated with birth defects, miscarriages and organ damage, is a “priority product” for regulation. Within four years, under the state plan, manufacturers could be ordered to stop including toluene in polishes and other nail products.
“The industry has known for a long time that toluene is a problematic chemical,” said Meredith Williams, acting director of the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.
Although regulators have been aware of toluene’s dangers for decades, they said it takes a long time to ban toxic substances outright. One problem, said Jared Blumenfeld, secretary of the state Environmental Protection Agency, is that manufacturers can simply replace a banned chemical with an equally dangerous one.
“The chemical industry is powerful,” Blumenfeld said. “They don’t want to be regulated. But California says enough is enough.”
To make their announcement Friday, state regulators took over a Mission District nail salon that is a founding member of the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, a handful of salons that have voluntarily agreed to stop using toluene and other toxic chemicals.
Van Nguyen, owner of the New York Nail salon at 3483 Mission St., said she has long known of the dangers of toluene and has refused to have it in her store. She said she suspects it was responsible for two miscarriages she suffered. In 2010, she said, she threw out about 700 bottles of tolueneinfused nail polish, which set her back about $1,200. She also invested in masks, gloves and a ventilation system.
Toluene, which helps create a smooth look and clear colors in polishes, is one of the “toxic trio” of chemicals long found in nail products. The others are formaldehyde, a preservative, and dibutyl phthalate, which gives polish a hard finish.
Nguyen said her salon now features more than 1,000 toluene-free polishes with colors such as Violet Vixen (purple), Risque Business (brown) and My Sweet Desire (orange).
The battle against the toxic chemical trio in California is nothing new. In 2012, a widely reported state study found that nail products claiming on their labels to be free of the three chemicals still contained them. Those chemicals, banned in many foreign countries, are legal in the U.S. but must be listed on ingredient labels.
“We appreciate (regulators) driving the use of safer nail products,” said Catherine Porter, policy director of the collaborative. “We hope nail salons across California become healthier places to work.”
State regulators said many of the 130,000 nail salon workers in California are women of childbearing age from lowincome Asian immigrant communities who speak little or no English. These workers, Williams said, are more vulnerable to chemical hazards than customers, who visit a salon only occasionally.
Banning toluene from salons and from nail products sold over the counter would require industry cooperation and public vigilance along with new rules. The public’s refusal to buy products containing dangerous chemicals is at least as powerful as a legal ban, Williams said. A spokeswoman for the nail polish industry, Lisa Powers of the Personal Care Products Council, said all of its 600 member companies have voluntarily stopped using toluene. She said the council represents the makers of 90 percent of the nail polishes sold in the U.S.
“We phased it out,” Powers said. “Not from any safety issue, but because customers told us they didn’t want it. We believe it’s safe to use.”
Blumenfeld disagreed. He called toluene “nasty stuff.”
When his young daughter buys tolueneinfused polish and opens the bottle, he said, “Oh my God, the whole house stinks. You can get a migraine.”
Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF