Purell damage to nails

[margeecruiser]

Hi. I've just come back from a week on the Navigator. Great cruise, and I washed my hands constantly, always before meals, and always used the Purell hand sanitizer going into MDR. My hands are a mess, very dry, and my manicure was totally ruined by day 2. My question is really if the manicure experts here can confirm that Purell will damage fingernails and manicures?

 

By the way, I've never had norovirus, but again I wash my hands very thoroughly before eating in any restaurant.

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Margee

[Uri1961]

I am not an expert, but yes, purrell does damage manicures.

[Arusha]

Purell is mostly ethanol (ethyl alcohol), which is a solvent.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol

[cb at sea]

Of course it damages nail polish! Thankfully, manicures are easy to do!

 

You can rub the stuff on the palms of your hands to satisfy the "sanitizing police"....and keep it off your nails! Just be sure to use soap and water frequently....nothing wrong with avoiding the purell, as long as you are keeping clean otherwise!

[Laurie S.]

I refuse to use it and say that I'm allergic. I prefer diligent hand-washing to be clean.

[laurspag]

My husband is a health and safety specialist at a large university, and he will hardly ever use Purell. He is a firm believe in soap and water. For the most half, I too rely on soap and water. I also use a paper towel to open the restroom door, just like it says on the signs in the restrooms on the ship. I do use the sanitizer at certain times, such as when we take a lot of stairs and I hold the handrail.

 

With that being said, I can't even begin to count how many times I saw maintenance cleaning the handrails.

[sherilyn70]

I refuse it as well. I have extremely sensitive and dry skin.

 

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[margeecruiser]

Thanks for all the replys. I think I will not use the Purell stations in the future. I will wash, wash,wash in the restroom as usual and then fake the Purell and continue to wave my hands like crazy as I walk into the dining room. I know I'm not spreading norovirus and others won't be upset when I don't actually get the Purell gunk on my hands.

 

Margee

[magandab]

I had acrylics put on before my cruise last December and she used a gel polish on them. The Purell had no effect at all on the manicure. That said, I agree, fake it, and just wash wash wash and use the paper towel to open the bathroom door.

 

One hint I read a while back was to make sure, the first thing you do everytime you enter your cabin, is wash your hands thoroughly with warm water and soap. I think we all get to our "home" and figure (even subconsciously) that we are safe. So making sure you don't spread anything onto your own belongings, which you will be handling all the time, is a good safety measure.

[LHARTWICK]

Thanks for all the replys. I think I will not use the Purell stations in the future. I will wash, wash,wash in the restroom as usual and then fake the Purell and continue to wave my hands like crazy as I walk into the dining room. I know I'm not spreading norovirus and others won't be upset when I don't actually get the Purell gunk on my hands.

 

Margee

 

I'll have to start doing the same. We were on the Crown Princess in April with a Norovirus outbreak. I was constantly washing/scrubbing my hands and using the Purell. By the time I got back home, the backs of my hands were a mess with blisters and itching. It took several weeks to clear up. The Purell does nothing for a virus anyway, but I felt like if I didn't use it prior to entering the eating areas, people were giving me really dirty looks. I didn't notice it messing up my nail polish, but my skin was a wreck.

[sail7seas]

Whatever hand sanitizer HAL uses, wrecks my nail polish.

One cruise I had clear polish on and it turned my nails brown.... it looked like smokers stains on my nails. :eek: Awful.

 

[RedHeadTexan]

A little off topic, but this week I discovered that Deet 100 will destroy nail polish. We lost our power for 2 days due to storm damage (my birch tree took out the power lines to our street), so we spent a couple of evenings out on the porch. Since the mosquitoes are really bad right now I decided to spray myself...hands, feet, everywhere. Well the deet made my polish bubble and peel.

 

Lisa, the insomniac

[mousey]

My question is...is it just the Purell product that does this or are all hand sanitizers a problem. I've never noticed this before as regards my manicure and have never had an allergic reaction to any of these types of products. I use the ones that I get at Bath & Body Works.

[Anita Latte]

I don't know if Purell really effects your manicure. I KNOW that constant hand washing can. Once the end of your nails is unprotected the water can get in there into the layers of your nails and even under the polish and that can have very negative effects on your manicure. Hand washing is the most effective way to clean your hands though...and you are supposed to scrub your hands for 30 seconds (sing Happy Birthday or the ABC song) and the need to clean is greater on a cruise ship so I'm not sure how to really avoid this damage. This is why wearing gloves when doing dishes is recommended to maintain a manicure...the water reduces the durability of the manicure, so you avoid the water...can't do that when you need to wash your hands.

 

I would think that you would need an extra durable top coat...and that you would need to reapply a lot, maybe daily.

 

The dry hands are definitely from the Purell. The way hand sanitizers work is to remove all moisture from your hands. You rub it all over and then the alcohol evaporates. The process is supposed to kill whatever needs moisture to survive, and this is how it kills bacteria. The key to it's effectiveness IS dryness.

 

Purell doesn't contain many of the additives that other brands use to counter the drying effects of the alcohol on your skin. mousey...this could be why you haven't had a reaction to the other brand...because it contains a lot of oils and other things to try to remoisturize your hands.

[OCruisers]

It makes the top of my hands break out so I rely on warm soapy water. :)

LuLu

[NYCCRUISEGIRL]

A little off topic, but this week I discovered that Deet 100 will destroy nail polish. We lost our power for 2 days due to storm damage (my birch tree took out the power lines to our street), so we spent a couple of evenings out on the porch. Since the mosquitoes are really bad right now I decided to spray myself...hands, feet, everywhere. Well the deet made my polish bubble and peel.

 

Lisa, the insomniac

 

I use DEET when cruising to the Western Caribbean and I know that my bottle leaked and bubbled a plastic container.

[NYCCRUISEGIRL]

A good top coat to protect regular polish is Seche Vite (sp?).

 

Julie