Chemicals in your nail polish

Following on from my chemicals in your skincare blog post, I thought I would write another post about chemicals, but this time, the ones found in nail polish. I love having nicely manicured or polished nails. I’m sure the strong unpleasant nail polish smell doesn’t do my health any favours, but I never considered the ingredients in my nail polish would be harmful.


After doing some research, the three main ingredients that kept cropping up as harmful are:


- Formaldehyde
A carcinogen (possible cancer causing substance) and can cause headaches, watery eyes, and burning throat when inhaling the fumes.


- Toluene
A neurotoxin and can interfere with the functions of neurons. Basically, neurons are cells in your nervous system and brain that aid many different brain functions. Typically, these cells should not be tampered with and toluene is known to cause short term problems such as weakness, nausea, confusion, and fatigue. Long term exposure to toluene can cause a severe nervous disorder.


- Dibutyl Phthalate (DBP)
Known to cause pregnancy complications, birth defects, or even loss of pregnancy. DBP is most commonly used as a plasticizer in PVC and then used to manufacture things like hoses, wires, cables, sheeting, tubing etc. Another study has shown that DBP accelerates the puberty stage in girls and has the potential to cause genital abnormalities in newborn males.


A bonus bad ingredient:


- Camphor
Research has shown that it can cause seizures, headaches, and stomaches.


So I am going to clear out my current polishes and will certainly be stocking up on these three brands of nail polish that do not contain any of these bad ingredients:


- Deborah Lippmann
- Nubar
- Zoya




These brands can be found on BeautyBay and Feel Unique.


The sources for which this blog post is based on:
- Go Green Street
- Beautiiful Healthy Fingernails