Microbial Growth on the Nails of Direct Patient Care Nurses Wearing Nail Polish.

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether nurses wearing nail polish pose a greater infection risk to patients than nurses who are not wearing nail polish. SAMPLE & SETTING: 89 direct patient care oncology nurses at a large midwestern National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center. METHODS & VARIABLES: The investigators assigned participants' three middle fingers of their dominant hand to three groups. RESULTS: Comparison of colony-forming units revealed that one-day-old polish exhibited fewer gram-positive microorganisms than the unpolished nail (p = 0.04). The four-day-old polish showed significantly more microorganisms than the one-day-old polish (p = 0.03). The same trend was demonstrated for gram-negative microorganisms, but the difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.3 and p = 0.17, respectively). IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING: The results should be interpreted and applied to expert nursing practice in the care of vulnerable patient populations. Each institution and practitioner should make their own decisions and interpretation of evidence into practice.

Dermal exposure to plasticizers in nail polishes: An alternative major exposure pathway of phosphorus-based compounds.

Phosphorus-based compounds are used as plasticizers in the manufacture of many products found in the indoor environment. Here we quantitatively investigated dermal exposure to phosphorus-based compounds contained in 45 nail polishes purchased in Japan. The alternative plasticizer triphenyl phosphate (TPhP) was detected in some samples of the nail polishes made in the USA (concentration, 1.1-1.8 wt%). The potential dermal exposure rates for TPhP, estimated using ConsExpo (version 5.0; Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment), were in the range 200 (5%ile)-1700 (50%ile)-5000 (95%ile) ng kg-bw-1 day-1, which is more than 1400 times the reported values for exposure via dust ingestion and inhalation. Thus, dermal exposure via nail polish may be a major route of exposure to TPhP. The margin of exposure range for TPhP was 3.6 × 105-4.1 × 104-1.4 × 104. For comparison, the potential dermal exposure rate range for the conventional plasticizer dibutyl phthalate and the alternative plasticizer acetyl tributyl citrate was 360-3500-14,000 and 430-4100-17,000 ng kg-bw-1 day-1, respectively, and the margin of exposure range was 4.1 × 103-4.2 × 102-1.1 × 102 and 2.3 × 105-2.4 × 104-5.9 × 103, respectively.