Unseen peril
Manicurists, most of them Vietnamese,
face health risk
by Lorraine Sanders and Tom Carter
A hot health issue in the Bay
Area that hasn’t
hit San Francisco yet involves nail salons, a cottage
industry that is licensed by the state but has
little oversight and is largely self-policing.
Nail salons pose health risks to the public,
and hidden long-term risks to the workers.
It started in December, when
state health inspectors cracked down on salons
in San Jose after scores of customers broke out with
skin rashes that wouldn’t
heal and oozing sores that had baffled doctors. Then,
in January in Oakland, instances of mold cropped up
after manicures and pedicures. And in February, health
inspectors were sent to check salons in Martinez after
six patrons who’d had pedicures contracted
mycobacterial furunculosis, which causes boils on
the lower legs.
These hygiene-related problems
aren’t the potentially
biggest health risks at nail salons. We didn’t
find or hear of any cases of toxic injuries caused
by the chemical-laden workplace that is a nail salon
or beauty shop. Yet there is plenty of concern that
the pleasant ritual of providing manicures and pedicures
may pose hidden health risks that a single ethnic population
would bear the brunt of – the Vietnamese, especially
women.
It’s a business that is dominated by women,
a preponderance of them Vietnamese American, who comprise
upward of 82% of California’s 42,000 licensed
manicurists, according to Tin Nguyen, the founder of
a new organization, Vietnamese Nail Care Professional
Association based in Modesto. (see sidebar.) And it’s
a business that is easy and inexpensive to to get
into. Shops seem to be proliferating everywhere but
in the Tenderloin.
Surprisingly, there aren’t many nail salons
here – The Extra located six – though
there are as many as 5,000 Vietnamese in the neighborhood,
and some work in nail salons, says Philip Nguyen,
CEO of Southeast Asian Community Center. In an e-mail
interview he explains why the Vietnamese have gravitated
to the salon business:
“Most if not all Vietnamese
are refugees and they want to work desperately
for their living, to get themselves out of public assistance,
and to support their loved ones still in Vietnam.
Only a very small percentage can speak fluent
English. They will jump into any businesses which do
not require much English, have short training and or
training in Vietnamese and low capital for opening
the business: Nail salons fit in very well with their
expectation.”
They are taught about the toxic dangers hidden inside
the glitzy packaging of the glamour products they use
in their work. Sections of the manicurist curriculum
in beauty schools stress the potential peril and offer
safety tips and procedures. But, unlike the hygiene
problems, the toxic risks are likely long-term.
Nail salons use products with names like Pink Champagne
and Dewy Fawn that, environmental specialists say,
contain countless untested chemicals, posing toxic
risks.
The bottles and vials, cans and tubes of beauty products
ubiquitous in nail salons also can sicken and, potentially,
even kill you. This assortment of containers and dispensers
holds chemicals that are volatile, toxic and at the
very least irritating if they come in contact with
skin or are breathed in over a period of time.
According to Danette Schmidt,
a former nail technician who heads the nail technology
program at San Francisco Institute of Esthetics
and Cosmetology on Folsom Street: “If
you do it for eight or 10 years, you can get really
sick from it.”
One especially loathsome, illegal
product that is sometimes used when applying acrylic
nails is methyl methacrylate, or MMA, an adhesive
developed for dentistry. MMA
was banned by the federal Food and Drug Administration
in 1974. The institute has a brochure warning consumers
about it. MMA has excessive and unusual odor, toxic
vapors, eternal gripping power and it’s cheap.
“Sure,” says Aaron Palm, the institute’s
manager, “for 10 bucks you can get a big bag
of it. And it just doesn’t come off. You need
a drill to get it off—which is legal—but
that can lead to infections. If you are paying less
than $20 for a full set (of plastic nails) you are
getting MMA.”
Because legal adhesives smell
almost as bad as MMA, the colorless liquid may
be hard for a consumer to distinguish when it’s being applied. But women
who later accidentally fall down discover it the hard
way. They don’t break a nail, according to
Palm, their whole nail peels back.
No one really knows what these
products can do; they can only offer educated guesses
based on known characteristics of the ingredients.
There are more than 10,000 ingredients in uncounted
products, according to a June 2004 report on nail
products by the Environmental Working Group, a
D.C. nonprofit with an Oakland office. And the Food
and Drug Administration has no control over their use
in cosmetics, the group reports in “Skin Deep,” its
in-depth study of the problem.
The
desire for arty fingernails keeps the job market rosy
for manicuists.
Acetone, benzene, ethyl ether,
fiberglass, formaldehyde, toluene are among the
more familiar chemicals used in the vast assortment
of polishes, glues, thickeners, hardeners and other
compounds that are employed by cosmetologists.
A recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report
lists 26 potentially dangerous chemicals found
in nail products alone. Prolonged exposure to any of
these chemicals could be harmful, the EPA says,
potentially causing a range of health effects from
minor rashes to cancer. But how much salon workers
are at risk is largely unknown.
In partnership with the University
of California’s
San Francisco Community Occupational Health Project
(COHP) and School of Nursing, the Asian Law Caucus
has visited more than 100 Oakland nail salons to assess
environmental and safety issues and provide education
about workers’ health and legal rights. But
at this time the project will not go as far as offering
nail technicians clinical exams to test for illnesses,
according to Nan Lashuay, COHP’s director and
an assistant professor at UC’s School of Nursing.
Small nail shops are notoriously
tight-lipped about their operations. That’s because a large proportion
of them are family-owned and operated by recent immigrants, said
T. Van Do, a community advocate for the Asian Law
Caucus.
Many Southeast Asian workers come to the United States
without the English language skills necessary for most
jobs, and the nail technician licensing exam is available
in Vietnamese. Once licensed, most people work for
relatives or family friends, Do said. In talking with
Oakland nail technicians, Do found few who understood
their rights or the possible health hazards of their
jobs. But even if they did, she is not sure they would
act differently.
“The nonconventional employer-employee relationship
really complicates matters,” she said. “In
many instances, it makes it really difficult to assert
their rights, even if the workers know they have
rights.”
If workers do understand the health risks they face
in salons, they are likely to consider them a necessary
part of the job.
Nail salons are largely left to themselves to implement
health safeguards, unless consumers complain to the
state Board of Cosmetology and Barbering.
“We encourage people to file complaints,” said
Patti Roberts, the board’s spokeswoman.
With only 18 inspectors statewide, consumer complaints
play a role in how inspectors are deployed. In December,
for example, seven inspectors were sent to San Jose
after skin infections broke out at nail salons.
Jessica Easterling, a former
nail technician, said: “The
majority of nail salons I’ve seen barely clean
up after the last customer before ushering the next
customer into the ‘relaxing heat and massage
chair/foot bath,’” she said. “The
prospect of disease doesn’t relax me in the
least.”
The Asian Law Caucus, the COHP,
and the newly created Vietnamese Nail Care Professional
Association (VNCPA) are trying to improve workers’ conditions.
Tin Nguyen, a son of nail professionals and founder
of the VNCPA in November, said change would only
come from better communication, which his organization
aims to improve by contacting salon owners, compiling
an industry newsletter, and assisting workers
with everything from form completion to communication
with the state board.
“They are really underserved, and the communication
is just not there,” he said. “Some chemicals
are dangerous, and nail care professionals just don’t
know that.”
The demand for manicurists is rising rapidly in the
beauty industry, according to the U.S. Department of
Labor. Employment of manicurists and pedicurists is
expected to increase by a third in five years, almost
twice the rate as for hairdressers, cosmetologists
and skin care specialists, the department reports.
Vietnamese in California are
responding in record numbers, too. Projecting from the first eight
months of 2004-05 data, it’s likely that 3,000
more Vietnamese-Americans will have taken the manicurist
test than last fiscal year’s 5,246, a 43% increase.
Results of the manicurist written
test—given
by a private company under contract with the state
both in English and, since 1996, in Vietnamese—show
a rise in the number taking the English version, too.
Last fiscal year, 2,333 took it in English. In the
first eight months of 2004-05, that total had been
bested by 18.
How
the test came to be offered in Vietnamese is a bit
of a mystery. According to one story, Tippi Hedren,
the tortured female lead in Alfred Hitchcock’s
film “The Birds,” was the influence. Known
more as an animal-rights advocate, Hendren was moved
by the plight of refugees coming to America in the
late 1970s and visited a Vietnamese resettlement center
in Southern California. There, a Vietnamese woman gave
her a manicure. Apparently charmed by the woman’s
manner and concerned by her lack of English, Hedren
pushed the state to offer the language option on
the written test.
Tin Nguyen of the Vietnamese
Nail Care Professional Association doesn’t buy it. “The timing
isn’t right,” he says.
All that state board spokeswoman
Patti Roberts is certain of is that the state responded
in the 1990s to “many requests” for
the test in Vietnamese.
Regardless, the job was a natural fit for hardworking
refugees.
Salary and tips for manicurists
can bring as much as $50,000 a year—depending on the salon site
and the worker’s personality. It’s cheaper
and easier to become a manicurist than a cosmetologist.
To be licensed in California, the cosmetologist course
of study is 1,600 hours and can cost $10,000;
manicurists need 400 hours at a fraction of the cost. The
Board of Barbering and Cosmetology determines the
minimum curriculum for schools.
“The occupation doesn’t require a lot
of skills—more about learning the tricks of the
trade and you’re pretty set,” Tin Nguyen
explained. “Most either enter the business because
they know there’s support, from family and friends.
We’re a close-knit community. Another reason
is, we’ve established hui.”
Hui is a centuries-old Vietnamese
practice much like the Chinese mutual aid societies
that provide credit and investment opportunities.
It’s an alternative
to banks and loan sharks.
Lorraine Sanders writes for
the Neighborhood Environmental Newswire, which
provided critical support for this story. Tom Carter
is the Central City Extra’s
staff reporter. Geoff Link and Marjorie Beggs of
The Extra contributed to this piece.
