Woman Claims Manicure Gave Her Cancer

Deepa Shrish Singgali gives a manicure to a client at Mt. Everest Nail Salon in Ridgewood, Queens, New York on May 11, 2022. – They are the artisans of affordable beauty on almost every New York City street corner. But migrant nail salon workers endure low wages, poor conditions and health risks — a reality they hope a new law will change. They are demanding enforcement of the minimum hourly wage of 15 dollars, overtime payments, better access to protective gloves and masks, meal breaks and social protections. (Photo by Andrea RENAULT / AFP) (Photo by ANDREA RENAULT/AFP via Getty Images)

(Photo by ANDREA RENAULT/AFP via Getty Images)

There seems to be nothing more relaxing than having someone cut and file your nails, removing the skin from the cuticles that seems to grow halfway up the nail bed, and having someone scrape out the crud from underneath them! Ha! What makes this a luxury is that someone else is doing your grooming for you. It's kind of like having a housekeeper for your nails. I used to get a manicure and pedicure every other week. I loved the thirty second back massage you get when sitting in the manicure chair. Yes, the :30 massage mention is a little sarcastic because although I know they are trying to sell you on getting a longer massage, I often thought that the tease was over way to quickly. What ended my love affair at the nail salon was the one time the salon I attended was extremely busy. My pedicurist grabbed an instrument from the chair of the pedicurist set up next to me and used it on me right after it was used on the woman sitting next to me without being sterilized. I still think about how I should have just dried my feet, put on my shoes, and walked out of the salon.

A California woman is warning people to avoid manicurists because she claims she developed cancer from getting her nails done. Grace Garcia says things started going south in 2021 when a manicurist accidentally cut her. "As the technician was cutting my cuticle, she cut me," Garcia says. "It was a deep cut and I remember being very upset about it." Five months later, the cut had long since healed -- but Garcia’s finger was still throbbing, she says. So she visited a dermatologist, who performed a biopsy on the finger. "It came back as a squamous cell carcinoma, which is a very common form of skin cancer," says Dr. Teo Soleymani. “Hers was HPV-driven.”

HPV is a common virus that can cause warts or, in rare cases, cancer, Soleymani says. Although Garcia is now cancer-free, she fears other people might not be so lucky. So she’s warning people if you must go to a manicurist, make sure their tools have been sterilized before they use them on you.

-Maryann Morgan

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Manicure Nails Pedicure

Woman Claims Manicure Gave Her Cancer

There seems to be nothing more relaxing than having someone cut and file your nails, removing the skin from the cuticles that seems to grow halfway up the nail bed,…

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