Should I Avoid UV Nail Dryers While Pregnant?

I’m a mom of one (plus one on the way!) who loves getting a gel manicure. I go consistently every three weeks, and it’s an hour to myself I look forward to. I would love for you to break down the study from UCSD on the harmful effects of the UV dryers used for gel manicures.
—Maggie

This sounds like a lovely hour. Let me see if I can rescue it for you. The paper to which you refer is here. The motivating idea is fairly simple.

Think about tanning beds. Tanning beds are known to be a skin cancer risk factor. They work by emitting UVA rays, which tan you but also damage your skin and the DNA of your skin cells. This can lead to cancer.

hands placed on a UV scanning device — Leeloo The First / Pexels

UV gel drying lights use a different UVA wavelength, but in principle the same could be true of them. That is: they could effectively be tanning beds for your hands. This could lead to the possibility of an increased risk of skin cancer in your hands if you used them.

However, this is theoretical. This particular study evaluated it in a lab setting. The researchers expose several types of cells — mouse cells, human foreskin cells, adult human epidermal cells — to UV gel dryers. They find that exposure to the UV rays kills the cells and causes mutations. For example, 20 minutes of time in the UV dryer caused 20% to 30% of the cells to die.

It seems like the UV dryer is kind of acting like the tanning bed, despite being a different wavelength.

The lab results here seem to make sense, but it is key to note that there is a long way between these lab results and the conclusion that UV dryers cause skin cancer. Human cells in fingers are different from the cells used in labs. This paper does not have any direct evidence on links between skin cancer and tanning beds. It cites two other anecdotal reports on this. One was from a 52-year-old woman who used both UV dryers and tanning beds weekly, and had several skin conditions; a second paper reports on two women with non-melanoma skin cancer on their hands and exposure to UV nail lights. These are pretty far from good epidemiological evidence.

So, what to do? This is fairly light evidence to base any real behavior change on. You could consider wearing sunscreen on your hands when you go for your gel nails.