UV nail lamps don't cause skin cancer

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Alpert Medical School of Brown University and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Providence, R.I., measured the radiation emitted from a 10-minute session with each of three devices, and then calculated the lamp’s carcinogenic effectiveness. Then they compared that with a Food and Drug Administration-approved narrowband UVB (NBUVB) phototherapy device common in dermatology practice and calculated the carcinogenic equivalence in terms of NBUVB courses, according to the study published in the December issue of Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

The researchers found that the exposure received from UV nail lamps “is a tiny fraction of a single NBUVB course, and hence does not produce a clinically significant increased risk of developing skin cancer.” DT