How to "Green" Your Nail Polish

Video Transcript

"Nail polish is a very, very common ingredient in most of our lives. As women we like to have pretty fingers and toes. Traditional nail polishes however have three incredibly toxic chemicals in them: formaldehyde, toluene, and dibutyl phthalate. Dibutyl phthalate is a very toxic plastic. We all know what formaldehyde is used for, it's a preservative. And toluene is a by-product found in gasoline. So these products have been shown to be very harmful to the vapors that we inhale. That off-gas from just even opening up the nail polish and even smelling it. You've probably smelled it just by walking into your nail salon. So this happens to be one of the first brands to remove those three chemicals. It's called Zoya brand, and it was developed by a woman and her husband. And what they discovered is that they could create a beautiful nail polish that was long lasting and chip resistant without having these chemicals. So there's a movement underfoot to remove these incredibly toxic chemicals because you obviously don't need them to have a beautiful application of nail polish. There are several other brands that are doing the same thing. And I would direct people the "Campaign for Safe Cosmetics" website. They are responsible for lobbying some of the major nail polish manufacturers to remove at least formaldahyde and toluene, but them ultimately they would like them to remove dibutyl phthalate. That's great, this is pretty. The European union has outlawed dibutyl phthalate and all phthalates as a matter of fact, which are a form of plastics that have been shown to be hormone disruptive among other things. So this will last you and incredibly long amount of time. Where can you find this? You can go online, Zoya.com and that is spelled Z-O-Y-A. They are a family run business and they do sell to the public. They sell to a lot of nail professionals. But their top coats, their base coats, and their lacquers, are all made, and they have hundreds of colors, are all made without those chemicals. And then if you can't find this you can always consider not wearing nail polish. Exactly, and you can also find nail polishes that are water based. They don't last as long and the coverage is not always complete, but they have absolutely no toxic, anything in them. Great. "