Does Your Nail Salon in Darien Sanitize Tools Between Customers?

It seems that about half the nail salons in Darien — and there are 24 of them — are cleaning and sanitizing tools that touch your hands and feet between the time they touched the previous customer and when they touch you (and possibly scratch or cut you).

And that should concern you, says Darien Health Director David Knauf.

He recommends that nail salon customers watch to see whether or not a tool or piece of equipment has been cleaned and sanitized before it’s used on you, if you can tell. You can always ask, he said. (For recommendations from others, see the end of this article.)

Darien health sanitarians inspect nail salons every year to recertify them as healthy, under a state law that mandates the annual inspections but hasn’t told local health departments how to do them, Knauf says.

Picture of a manicure taken at the nail salon Renault Kangoo Jamboree in Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi, Japan. (Photo by Twingo)

The state Health Department has never been required to issue standards for healthy practices, and it doesn’t. Darien, like all other municipalities in the state, does the best it can.

One thing that seems like an obvious unhealthy practice is in not cleaning and sanitizing tools between the times that workers at the salons use them on different customers, Knauf said. Barbers do it with combs, for instance, and many nail salons also do it — but only about half.

“If you take a nail file and go from one [customer] to the other, or a cuticle cutter [without cleaning and sanitizing it] that’s kind of like using a fork without it being sanitized between customers,” Knauf said. “No one would tolerate a transfer of eating utensils from one table to the next [without the utensils being washed], and there’s no reason to accept that.”

“There’s a real, serious potential health hazard in these facilities.”

As the Health Department inspects each nail salon in town this month, inspectors are finding no sanitizing between uses for various tools and pieces of equipment, Knauf said. They’ve found similar practices about as often in the past, he said.

“We can cite them, we can reinspect them, we can close their doors periodically, if that’s what we need to do” to keep individual nail salons safe, he said. “But the everyday practices — we’re not there every day. We can’t be.”

But individual customers are there day after day, and it’s in their best interests to speak up if they see an item hasn’t been sanitized or, if they don’t know, to ask the staff or management, Knauf said.

Knauf said that Darien Health Sanitarian Mindy Chambrelli received an email with a picture of an ugly infection a woman got on her hand after going to a nail salon (not one in Darien) where items weren’t sanitized before touching her hands.

What some others are recommending

The Cleveland Clinic website recommends watching what nail salon staffs do with equipment between uses and asking about sanitary procedures when you visit a salon.

Among the recommendations from experts cited in a U.S. News magazine article:

“People with poor circulation or diabetics are at a much higher risk of contracting an infection, and most diabetics should avoid going to a typical nail salon […] Check with your local podiatrist to see if the office offers a medical pedicure instead.

“However, all salon-goers can protect themselves by bringing their own instruments or asking technicians about the salon’s disinfecting procedures – and requesting the technician use plastic gloves.”

As Knauf puts it: “Don’t allow other people to do stuff that you wouldn’t do. I mean —  really.”