Healthy Living

Is Your Darien Nail Salon Safe? Darien Health Department Has Some Advice

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Darien is a very popular destination for salons and other spa services to locate and open for business. With a population of 21,190, our town supports 28 salons that offer cosmetology services, while a nearby municipality has 16 salons catering to a population of 51,384 people. This comparison becomes even more fascinating when you take into account that more than half of our residents are under the age of 18 or over 65 years of age — a population that may be less likely to be receiving services as frequently or as extensively as the middle-age bracket. _____________

— This announcement from Darien Health Department is from Catherine Gorey, a Darien High School intern with the department last spring who organized the department’s “Health in Your Hands” nail salon safety awareness campaign, and Darien Health Director David Knopf. _____________

In 2001, the state government passed legislation directing local health departments to inspect personal service salons, but no statewide guidelines or regulations were provided leaving local health departments to develop their own procedures and policies for protecting public health.

Business
Manicure

Does Your Nail Salon in Darien Sanitize Tools Between Customers?

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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.