The nail polish brings hours of fun in perspective, but sometimes it is also a big doubt on the toxicity of the thing. Some brands now rush in offering "healthy" nail polishes... What to choose?
I suppose you have all experienced the polish that smells of death? Noticing the smell of kerosene and turpentine coming from the nail polish bottle, you have a bit of trouble to put it on nails without thinking of Chernobyl. Many brands now offer a much more "safe" formula.
Why choose a safe nail polish?
Several reasons may push you away from traditional polishes to turn to more natural solutions:
- Having sensitive eyes: yes, you're maybe not seeing the correlation between nail lacquer and sensitive eyes, but it can happen that the "normal" polish causes worries. For example, if you tend to have sensitive eyes to allergies, the act of rubbing your eyes with varnished fingers can cause a bad reaction. In this case, the healthy varnish is a very good alternative.
- Being concerned of the severe impact of toxic substances to your body. Their toxic fumes can irritate the eyes, nose and throat, cause allergic reactions on the skin and damage the nervous system causing headache, dizziness and fatigue. Also, they interfere with hormone function, impairing fertility and harm the health of the unborn child.
- Being environmentally conscious: traditional varnish is deemed as more or less pollutants. Yes, well obviously you do not throw them in the toilet water (do not even try otherwise will permanently kill your bowl), but sometimes a bottle of varnish become dry or pasty finish in the trash ... Healthier polishes reduce the risk of pollution.
- Focus on good and conscious ingredients: If you already use products with natural ingredients for the rest of your care, it seems obvious to look for the same thing in make-up and nail polish.
How to recognize a safe nail polish?
There are a couple of categories:
- The water-based polish: lower quality than conventional polish (the holding is not fabulous). However, they are a good option and contain polymers, non-toxic dyes and water.
- The 3/4/5-Free Nail Polishes are the most common healthier alternatives. 3-free means they are without toluene, formaldehyde and DBP. The 4 and 5-free are more exclusive (they do not contain Formaldehyde resin for 4-free, and camphor for 5-free).
What is more interesting is that you can find now 5-free nail lacquers in a great variety of finishes and effects from glossy to opaque, metallic to matte metallic and mineral color infused nail polishes.
Still don’t know what to choose?