LACKAWANNA COUNTY -- The business of being beautiful has an ugly side and a recent investigation and crackdown may have you thinking twice before you visit a nail salon.
New York State is cracking down on measures to protect workers at salons after a New York Times investigation that revealed major health risks: nail salon workers affected with cancers, miscarriages, children with birth defects, skin issues, lung problems, and more.
Health officials and scientists have linked the nail polishes, solvents, hardeners, and glues with serious health problems.
"When you walk in there, you immediately get hit with the chemicals. It totally makes sense to me that they're being affected by it," said Ariel Kimes of Moosic.
"It's just mind-blowing that it can actually happen because you don't actually think about it while you're getting your nails done. And you're just thinking about how it's gong to look afterwards and not how the people actually, it affects them. It's just not okay," said Felecia Garcia of Moosic.
De Nguyen works at Fancy Nails in Dunmore and said a relative who also works at the salon has had allergic reactions to products.
"He gets like allergic reactions now in his hands. His eyes are puffing up, forced to use gloves now. I don't know the effects. That's the thing. If I knew the effects maybe I would be more scared of it, but I do wear like the face mask when I'm using the fills and the full set with all the powders flying everywhere, but other than that I don't know exactly what the bad effects are," he said.
In New York State, the governor has reacted with emergency measures to protect nail salon workers. He said a new task force will investigate salons and institute new rules to protect manicurists from dangerous chemicals.
Newswatch 16 contacted state officials who said nail salons in Pennsylvania are not licensed by the state health department, but rather by the department of state and regulations are aimed at disinfecting tools to protect customers.
A state spokeswoman said as far as she knows, there are not regulations designed to specifically protect nail salon workers.
Some say that is a serious problem, especially since many nail salon workers are immigrants.
They don't know how to read English and they don't understand you know all the warning signs and stuff," said Nguyen.