In Utah, you can open a nail salon without ever having taken a single nail class. The state doesn’t license nail technicians and there are no laws governing salon sanitation.

Nail professionals Trudy Dalton, Karen Haitt, Leesa Meyers, and Toi Lee Fowler want to change that. They have formed the Utah Nail Association of Continuing Education (UNACE) and they are looking for members.

They challenge Utah nail technicians with the questions. Do you want higher industry standards? Would you like better education and sanitation? Do you want a voice in what happens to the nail profession? If you are a nail technician in Utah who answers yes to these questions, UNACE wants you as a member.

“We’d like to get a group of 100 members and let them take a voice and decide what they want to about licensing issues in Utah,” Dalton told NAILS.

Dalton says she would like to see nail salon licensing in every state in the country. Currently, only Utah, Nebraska, Connecticut, and Alaska remain without nail technician licensing.

As West Coast education coordinator for IBD, Dalton said she has heard horror stories from all over about the ramifications of the lack of licensing.

“I’m concerned about sanitation-that the tools aren’t disinfected and that nail technicians don’t use a separate file for each client. It would be nice to have some sort of (association) logo to put on your shop window so the public knows you’ve at least made an effort to educate yourself,” says Dalton, who also owns The Painted Lady Nail Salon in Salt Lake City.

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