People are being warned that going for a manicure and having their nails polished raises their chances of skin cancer, a study has found.
The popular beauty treatment carries hidden health dangers researchers have discovered due to the ultraviolet lamps that are used to dry the nail polish and regular exposure notably increases the risk.
In a similar way to sunbeds the UV rays can damage DNA and lead to cancer-causing mutations in the cells.
Scientists noted that light from the UV lamps repeatedly shone on skin cells leads to a high number dying, and damage causing an increase chance of cancer was found in others that survived.
During the study, published in Nature Communications, it was seen that there was a difference to the effect on the skin from one to several sessions using UV lamps with the latter a lot more severe.
Three consecutive 20 minute sessions using the lamps led to up to 70% skin death.
"Our experimental results strongly suggest that radiation emitted by UV nail polish dryers may cause cancers of the hand,” the study stated.
One of the authors Ludmil Alexandrov told how the mutations caused by the UV light were similar to those in skin cancer patients.
He said: “We also saw that some of the DNA damage does not get repaired over time, and it does lead to mutations after every exposure with a UV-nail polish dryer.
“We saw that exposure may cause mitochondrial dysfunction, which may also result in additional mutations. We looked at patients with skin cancers, and we see the exact same patterns of mutations in these patients that were seen in the irradiated cells.”
The research comes after an American beauty queen told of how she was diagnosed with skin cancer at the age of 18 from 'getting gel manicures'.
Miss Illinois Karolina Jasko, now 25, was getting her nails done when she noticed a black line under her fingernails. She went straight to the doctor to get it checked out and was diagnosed with melanoma.
Her thumb was left scarred from the cancer and she lost a number of fingernails.
Karolina, who is a contestant in the Miss USA pageant, later told how she wanted to raise awareness about the potential dangers of the UVA lights used in gel manicures.
She told Fox 46: "I got this black vertical line under my right fingernails and I never really noticed it because I always had acrylics. The doctor said I most likely got it from getting my nails done at the nail salon - from getting acrylics from the light."
