"Pick a color!" a pretty, 38-year-old woman named Pong orders, as I enter Tower Nails, a typical Bay Area nail salon owned and staffed by Vietnamese immigrants of childbearing age.
Reds, corals, pinks, creams, blacks, blues, even Kelly greens. Selecting a polish can be as stimulating as shopping for baby names, a fun and serotonin-releasing, female preoccupation witnessed as early as the teenage years. Perhaps that explains the huge proliferation of the affordable walk-in salons - the number of nail salons in California has tripled in the last two decades. The overwhelming majority of the workers are Asian immigrants, and of the 300,000 nail salon workers in the state, 80 percent are Vietnamese. And these women, and perhaps even their customers, may be at risk from a toxic cocktail of chemicals.
The biggest concern is the trio of toluene, formaldehyde and dibutyl phthalate (DBP) found in most base and top coats and polishes. This combination of chemicals has been linked to cancer, birth defects and skin rashes, especially with frequent exposure. Women in America need to ask themselves, are they picking their color or their poison?
