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Editor's Note: In Any Language, Sanitation is Critical
As an industry, we endured more than a year of constant television and news reports that scared potential salon customers into thinking that they took their lives into their hands by getting a manicure.
January 1, 1997
2 min to read
A few years ago, the news media blew the roof off the nail industry by exposing a very ugly side of nail salons: poor salon sanitation. As an industry, we endured more than a year of constant television and news reports that scared potential salon customers into thinking that they took their lives into their hands by getting a manicure
While some of the coverage was sensationalistic, it was more accurate than we probably want to admit, and the spotlight on the industry forced many salons to get serious about sanitation. We’ve seen increased awareness in salon sanitation among nail professionals and consumers alike (in fact. a whole product category of implement kits was born of this problem). However, compliance is hardly universal. Few salons abide by the one-client/one-file rule, for example
In an effort to address this situation several years ago, the Nail Manufacturers Council developed sanitation guidelines for nail salons, and they updated them in 1996. The guidelines are based on common state board regulations, and they have become accepted as the industry standard for basic salon sanitation. Beginning on page 84 of this issue, NAILS has translated these guidelines into Vietnamese, Spanish, and Korean to make them available to as many nail professionals as possible. We feel that communicating this message is critical to increasing compliance and improving the image of our industry. The nail industry is composed of a diverse group of individuals and we must face industry problems together: NAILS is reaching out to all nail technicians — regardless of the language they speak — by devoting several pages of this issue to ensuring that this critical health issue gets maximum attention
You are free to make as many copies of these pages as you need to share with your coworkers, schools, or neighboring salons. We suggest you even copy the guidelines for your clients and let them know that you abide by them
Then, let's ALL clean up our act.
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