Watch: How to enjoy gel nails without fear of UV skin damage

Gel nails are beautiful and durable, but they come with a red flag warning: the LED UV light used to harden them may contribute to skin cancer risk. That led UC Berkeley Professor Alex Katz to come up with a no-worries way to protect your skin while nails cure.

The idea came to Katz, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, when he was working with an antioxidant mineral called cerium carbonate. It helps protect products like paint and plastic from UV damage, which turns them yellow and shortens their lifetime. Since the mineral doesn’t penetrate the skin and doesn’t dissolve in water, he thought it would make a great spray-on liquid for short-term skin protection — like the time it takes to harden gel nails. It doesn’t interfere with gel hardening either, which is the major drawback of regular sunscreen. And it leaves no oily residue.

That led Katz to research showing that cerium carbonate destroys harmful chemicals called reactive oxygen species, or ROS, which UV light generates in skin. The ROS lead to DNA damage that is associated with cancer and aging. Katz founded a company to market his discovery — cerium carbonate dispersed in water — as Magan’s HandShield. Just spray it on, rub it over your hand or foot, and your skin is protected from the LED lamp’s UVA rays. 

In the short video above, part of our ongoing Born at UC Berkeley video series, student host Angela Zhang breaks down how it all works on a trip to her favorite nail salon near campus.