Sharing is part of life. But for beauty products, sampling from makeup bags of our friends’ can sometimes inspire pink eye, bacterial cross contamination and other nasty infections. We wondered about the rules for sharing nail polish that whether it also put us at risk for infection passing, while a hygienic approach to makeup may require closely guided mascara wands.
To know whether nail polishes are breeding ground for bacteria, we talked with Dr. Chris Adigun of New York University Langone Medical Center and those dermatologists who specializes in nail disorder.
She says that sharing nail polish does not present an infection or health risk in general. This is because to microorganisms, the solvents in nail polish are chemically toxic and they degrade their cell walls within seconds after contact. There have been studies in fact shows that in nail lacquer, the microbes cannot survive, whether they’re deliberately contaminated with microorganisms for laboratory studies or they’re in a salon. So, at your local nail joint, you don’t have to give that much-used bottle of Mademoiselle the stink-eye anymore.