you'll like this next episode - they talk about your people
my people? chinese australians?
these are vietnamese americans
oh i got confused
because of the slanty eyes
oh
wow
it's different if i'm drawing myself i changed my logo anyway
who drew these?
oh lord
not so pretty is a hbo documentary series about supposedly dangerous beauty products
it's a very persuasive sleek looking documentary
a lot of people chucked out their products after watching it and
as someone who breaks into bottles to use the last three drops at the bottom this cut me deep
i'm michelle of lab muffin beauty science i'm a chemistry phd and cosmetic chemist and i care
about my health which is why i've gone through the research on a lot of the ingredients that clean
beauty documentaries talk about and that's why i know they usually talk about them incorrectly
last time i talked about episode 1 makeup which was about asbestos and talc
this time we're talking about nails like and subscribe if
you like nerding out about the science behind beauty products
this episode focuses on health problems in nail salon workers
a lot of them are vietnamese immigrants people had tremendous respiratory health issues
miscarriages and pregnancy complications the skin coming off and breast cancer they talk to people
working in the nail industry and researchers studying these health problems they talk
about how activists have tried to improve the situation and what they recommend consumers do
i have less issues with this episode i still have issues because it does use a
lot of the same not entirely transparent techniques that we saw in episode one
documentaries aren't science and to me this is very much a problem with not so
pretty documentaries don't need to carefully go through all the data or try to be objective
they just need to tell a good story and a lot of the time science is not that
science usually doesn't have easy clear-cut answers and it's a gradual
process of building evidence there are very few exciting bombshells
so documentaries end up doing a lot of cherry picking they carefully choose little
bits of data to build a good story which doesn't necessarily match what the science actually says
in the talc episode they highlighted two brands that had asbestos in their products
and this was used to suggest that all products with talc were dangerous
even though there's good evidence that's not the case they left that out
they highlighted two people with mesothelioma who used talc products
and had some lawyers who were suing companies over talc basically just present their side
of the court case they didn't mention there's no real evidence that talc caused their mesothelioma
or that the chance of getting mesothelioma from makeup is just incredibly low so they really gave
a skewed perspective on the reality of the risks and what we should be doing to reduce these risks
this nail episode is one of the better ones probably because they
actually got relevant experts this time but they do still distort a
lot of the issues and they pull out some pretty questionable conclusions
first off they do mention a great point less privileged groups
tend to have less scientific research done on them
this is a huge problem in science that's been widely recognized for a long time
studies are done a lot more on white cis men for a bunch of reasons not just sexism
or racism although there is a lot of that just one example if there's any
chance that someone in your experiment could be pregnant you have to thoroughly check that
they're not because harming an unborn child for science is a really bad look
so logistically it's easier and cheaper to study subjects without this extra complexity
the problem is what happens in white cis men isn't always the same as what happens in everyone else
and that means that you often end up with worse treatments and outcomes for other groups
because of that lack of information
sometimes healthcare providers will even dismiss health problems as all in your head because that
health problem just hasn't been researched enough so there's no official evidence that it's an issue
there are lots of efforts to try to fix these imbalances but it's a very long process
and this whole mess is partly why the clean beauty narrative that beauty
products caused your health problems is so effective for women and people of colour
the way that black people and people of color are treated when they do try to seek treatment
they don't get taken seriously so i think that's it leads us
to you know try to seek an answer try to find our own answers which is not really
a solution um in my opinion and it's really sad and i think that you know when people see
documentaries like this they think you know they finally found an answer is giving us the answers
that we've been looking for all the time you know they don't consider the other factors
this episode features dr thu quach an epidemiologist who started researching
health problems in nail salon workers around 2008
they talk about one of her findings and here's where it gets misleading
but if you look at the paper they show you can see the rest of the paragraph that they've cropped out
it actually starts with "there was little evidence of increased risk for adverse birth outcomes"
babies small for gestational age is one of the few issues that's been linked to working
in nail salons but the documentary mentions all sorts of health problems miscarriages
birth defects breast cancer it lumps all of these together generalising them like they
all have the same amount of evidence they don't mention that one of dr quach's other
studies found that nail salon workers had a lower rate of cancer than average
and i'm not saying that these other health problems aren't linked to nail salons
my gut feeling is that some more will eventually be linked there needs to be
more research but i think it's really misleading how they make it seem like all these links have
already been discovered by cherry picking half a sentence from one study and only showing us that
so there isn't that much research showing higher rates of these health problems in
nail salon workers but there is evidence that they're exposed to much higher amounts
of potentially harmful substances than average that's why i think more health links will be found
and salon workers need more protections i'm pretty sure most scientists would agree
but the problem not so pretty has is that it really clings to clean beauty logic
that ingredients can be neatly divided into good and bad and once you take out the bad
toxic ingredients nail salon workers won't have any more health problems this isn't how it works
that's not how any of this works
how dangerous an ingredient is depends on how you're exposed to it
the most important issue is dose if you're exposed to more of something you're more
likely to be harmed by it and if you have enough of a relatively safe thing it can still be harmful
this is commonly referred to as the dose makes the poison
and this episode of not so pretty actually shows how ignoring exposure is a massive problem
there's this kind of hilarious moment where they dismiss a nail scientist
talking about how important exposure is
and then they cut to dr lupita montoya an aerosol scientist and talk about her
research on nail salons which is all about measuring exposure like there is zero point
doing the work she's done measuring the levels of different gases and nail salons
if you don't think the amount actually matters
and the documentary says that one minute later
so it's all about the levels
but then after talking about this the documentary goes straight back to ignoring exposure again
which is really silly a salon worker breathing fumes eight hours a day most days of the week
will have so much more exposure and very different health impacts compared to
someone getting a weekly manicure making the two situations sound the same is really ridiculous
i think we all know this if you smell strong paint fumes for too long you get a headache
if there's less or if it's a short amount of time then you're fine that's why dr
montoya calculated that salon workers would have a higher risk of cancer than average
that's why dr quach was looking for differences between salon workers and other people but making
it seem like the risk is the same is very handy because "salon workers are getting exposed to
harmful amounts of chemicals" is not going to be as viral as "nail polish is giving us all cancer"
so as you'd expect from how they keep forgetting that exposure is a thing and their giant list of
clean beauty partners their solution to all of these issues is clean beauty just take out
the so-called toxic ingredients from products every episode of not so pretty ends with a list
of do's and don'ts this time they tell us to avoid specific ingredients and nail polish tell us salon
to avoid them too keep getting our nails done and ask politicians to pass laws that mostly just
take out specific ingredients from products the laws were partly designed by their clean beauty
partners and this is super frustrating because removing the ingredients they list isn't going
to solve a lot of the problems i'll probably do a video going into 10 free nail polish at some point
because i've read so much bs while researching this if we focus specifically on the safety of
salon workers out of the 16 different ingredient groups they have seven don't have a function in
nail polish two don't really have any serious health impacts apart from skin irritation tphp
isn't inhaled it absorbs through skin so it's not a big issue if you're doing someone else's nails
so there are only six that are somewhat relevant
there's evidence that dibutyl phthalate toluene and xylene are probably not that great for you if
you have too much but they haven't been in the vast majority of nail polishes for a long time
xylene hasn't been a nail polish since the 90s i tried to buy a nail polish with dbp
and toluene on the label back in 2012 when i used to be a nail blogger check out my nail art
and they weren't even in the two dollar bargain bin polishes i had to go on ebay
salons could be buying salon only products that have these the fact that salon products don't
need to disclose their ingredients is actually a legitimate issue that the documentary talks about
formaldehyde is a serious problem for salon workers but it's in nail hardeners gels and
acrylics not usually nail polish and it comes from non-nail things too formaldehyde resin sometimes
has leftover unreacted formaldehyde in it but it has a lot less so it's mostly a problem for people
who are actually allergic to formaldehyde if they get the nail polish on their skin
dehp isn't absorbed through skin it's mostly an issue if you eat it salon workers aren't licking
people's fingernails unless it's a very special sort of salon but maybe tiny amounts inhaled over
a very long time could be an issue so the hit rate with this list isn't looking great
but more importantly this clean beauty approach of banning ingredients
misses a lot of the known problems first off in dr montoya's study that they showed there were
similar levels of benzene and formaldehyde in a "non-toxic" salon as other salons
it could be because nail polishes especially from smaller brands sometimes have ingredients
in them that aren't on the label it's already illegal to have an incorrect ingredients list
but as i said for episode 1 the problem usually isn't that there aren't laws it's that there
aren't enough resources to monitor products and enforce the laws that are already there
it could also be that furniture carpets building materials are releasing chemicals
like formaldehyde the levels they measured in salons have also been measured in homes
and preschools the study also found mma in colorado nail salons even though it's been
banned there it's an ingredient used in acrylic nails and it turns out that some
salon workers were requesting it over the safer alternative because it was easier to apply let
me just repeat this is all from the study that they actually showed us in the episode
secondly even substances that are relatively safe can still be nasty if you're breathing in lots of
it all the time for example acetone is in lots of nail polish removers and it isn't considered
dirty you actually make it inside your body but if you breathe in a lot for a long time it's linked
to some of the health issues that they mentioned in the documentary like headaches dizziness and
breathing problems and there are a whole bunch of so called clean ingredients just like this
and maybe the most bizarre thing is that there is actually a solution that solves a
lot of these issues that the documentary barely mentions cleaning the air inside nail salons
if you actually look at the studies on nail workers some of them do suggest
taking specific ingredients out of products but practically all of them say to tackle the air
since the main problem is that workers are breathing in high levels of lots of chemicals
the most obvious method is to improve ventilation having better airflow will
dilute all of the harmful chemicals that salon workers are breathing in
this includes dirty ingredients in the nail products but also safe ingredients
at harmful levels chemicals coming from the furniture and the building ingredients that
aren't listed on the labels ingredients that haven't been researched enough yet
there are laws in some states that require a certain level of ventilation although they can
be a bit vague and enforcement is as always a bit spotty it's also a requirement to be recognised as
a healthy nail salon in california this initiative was started by some of the activists they featured
but ventilation isn't mentioned in their do's and don'ts maybe it's buried deep in the safer beauty
bills package but even the act that's meant to protect salon workers is all about specific
chemicals it does get manufacturers to add ingredient lists to salon products and translate
safety data to other languages which is good but it still doesn't tackle a lot of the issues
and ventilation does actually come up a few times in the episode but they kind of just brush past it
and one action item they could have easily added would be to ask your salon to look at
the healthy nail salon guidelines and put them in place people who contributed to these guidelines
are featured in the episode these guidelines are pretty detailed they have sections on ventilation
and protective equipment and they do have a list of ingredients not to use but they
take into account exposure so for example ethyl acetate which is clean can't be used for removing
nail polish which is when workers would breathe more in but they can be used within nail polish
and i'm also wondering why something like a nationwide healthy salons program didn't
make it into the safer beauty bills package so to me it seems like this series and their partners
really go out of their way to promote clean beauty to the point where they purposely ignore
things the people they feature recommend and just focus on clean versus dirty ingredients
i'll be looking at episode 3 on skincare soon subscribe and click the nerdification
bell for that also hit the like and leave me a comment if you found this video useful
also check out my breakdown of episode one
if you want to check out a bunch of cosmetic chemists including me
talking about the series links are in the description