NAIL POLISH

Enessa Permyashkin

Casey Cruz

History• 17th- and 18th-century European royal courts wrote about

painting their nails• Recipe books from both

Britain and the U.S. both

had instructions for making

nail paints

Ingredients

• Key ingredient is nitrocellulose• A highly combustible material that is also used in making dynamite,

creates a film that holds together other substances• Main component used for car paint in the 1920’s• Fireworks known as "gun cotton“• Dissolved in ethyl acetate liquids.

• The polymers cement to the nail bed, keeping the polish on the nail. When the polish dries, the polymers harden and this is the reason why the polish does not slide off the nail.

Today’s Nail Polish• Plasticizers embed between polymer

chains, making polish flexible• Dibutyl phthalate and camphor are used to improve the flexibility of

the film.

• Pigments and sparkling particles, such as mica, are also added.

• Stearalkonium hectorite is added to:• Keep the glittery particles from sinking to the bottom of the bottle.• Used as a thickening agent• To keep the other ingredients from separating and to make the

polish easier to apply.

Changes in nail polish• Dibutyl phthalate: could interfere with the endocrine

system• Toluene: many companies have also eliminated the

solvent in response to safety concerns

Pigments • There’s a wide variety of chemicals used as pigments in

nail polish. • Common pigments include iron oxides and other colorants, such as

you would find in paint or varnish.

• http://www.aquimicadascoisas.org/en/?episodio=the-chemistry-of-nail-polish