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  • Mission and History

    The CA Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative’s mission is to advance a preventative environmental health agenda to assure health and safety for the nail salon and cosmetology sector in California.

    The California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative was formed in 2005 out of a growing concern for the health, safety and rights of nail salon and cosmetology workers, owners, and students. The Collaborative addresses reproductive and environmental justice and health issues facing these communities through a multifaceted approach using policy advocacy, research, industry advocacy, and outreach and education.

    The Collaborative ensures that meaningful research, community-based projects, culturally and linguistically appropriate outreach and education, and policies are designed and implemented to positively impact the nail salon and cosmetology community on local and statewide levels. By working collectively to share knowledge, resources, and best practices, the Collaborative is a mechanism through which its members can unify its collective voices and respective strengths to leverage a greater power to achieve the Collaborative’s long-term social change vision of assuring the rights of the nail salon and cosmetology community to healthy workplace conditions that are free from toxic chemicals.

    Goals

    The goals of the Collaborative are to:

    1. Identify practices and policies that benefit both workers and small business owners.
    2. Target manufacturers of harmful products and upstream sources of toxins to develop greener and healthier salon products.
    3. Unify our collective voices and respective strengths to leverage greater power for change.
    4. Develop leadership of workers and owners to advocate for their own needs.

    Below are our key short- and long-term recommendations for reducing nail salon and cosmetology workers’ exposures to toxic chemicals and advancing their rights, health and safety.

    Recommendations

    • Manufacturers must reformulate nail products to eliminate toxic ingredients of known concern.
    • Nail salon and cosmetology workers should be provided with culturally and linguistically appropriate safety information and trainings on reducing toxic exposure and safer alternatives.
    • Outreach efforts should be focused within the nail and cosmetology communities to promote healthier and safer workplaces.
    • Ventilation in many salons should be improved to decrease toxic chemicals in the air.
    • Work to pass national legislation to prevent the use of toxic chemicals in cosmetic products including nail care products.
    • Give the United States Food and Drug Administration the authority to require pre-market testing of and to regulate cosmetic ingredients.
    • Conduct more research on the long-term health effects of chronic low-level exposure to toxic chemicals and frequent high exposures found in salon products.
    • Develop safer/greener chemicals for use in nail salon products that currently have no non-toxic alternatives.

    The Collaborative is grateful for the support of the following current and recent funding partners: