Nail Salon Workers—Chemical Exposure, Body Mapping, & MCS: Reena Shadaan, PhD

What can the daily chemical exposures faced by nail salon workers teach us about MCS, chronic illness, and the environments many people live and work in every day?

Aaron Goodman speaks with Reena Shadaan, PhD, from the University of Toronto, about chemical exposure, worker health, body mapping, and chronic illness in nail salon environments.

Topics include:

 • The hidden chemical exposures faced by nail salon workers
 • What nail salon environments may reveal about MCS and chronic illness
 • Body mapping and citizen science as tools for advocacy and documenting lived experience
 • How marginalized workers are pushing back against unsafe environments

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https://www.chemicalsensitivitypodcast.org/1970633/episodes/19262474-nail-salon-workers-chemical-exposure-body-mapping-mcs-reena-shadaan-phd

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhaCO-FAYgU

Transcript

Aaron Goodman: [00:00:00] You're listening to The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast. I'm Aaron Goodman. What can the chemical exposures faced by nail salon workers teach us about Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, chronic illness, and the environments many people live and work in every day? My guest is Dr. Rena Shadaan, Staff Research Scholar in Science and Technology Studies and Sustainability at the Technoscience Research Unit at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Shadaan's work explores environmental, occupational, and reproductive justice with a focus on lived experience, worker knowledge, and community-based research in places shaped by chemical exposure and environmental harm. Together, we discuss the daily chemical exposures faced by many nail salon workers, the hidden health impacts of salon environments, and what these experiences may reveal about MCS and environmental illness more broadly.

We also [00:01:00] explore body mapping and citizen science as forms of advocacy and resistance, and how these approaches may help people living with MCS document exposures, symptoms, and barriers across a wide range of situations. Dr. Shadaan's research has examined sites of chemical violence and resistance, ranging from the Bhopal chemical disaster in India to Canada's Chemical Valley and nail salons in the Greater Toronto Area.

Please check out and share a link for the podcast's new webpage. It's listen.chemicalsensitivitypodcast.org. It's easy to share with anyone in your life who may be interested in learning more about MCS, and please subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more, follow The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast on YouTube, Facebook, X, Instagram, Blue Sky, and TikTok, and you can reach me at [00:02:00] aaron@chemicalsensitivitypodcast.org.

Thank you for listening. 

Welcome to the podcast, Reena. Thanks for joining me. 

Reena Shadaan: Thank you so much for having me. 

Aaron Goodman: Pleasure. Would you like to talk a little bit about how you came to this work and what your research is about for listeners? 

Reena Shadaan: Yeah, of course. Um, so I, um, I basically work with nail salon workers.

I'm a researcher in the Techno Science Research Unit, which is an indigenous-led lab at the University of Toronto. We look at of anti-colonial, critical approaches to science and technology studies, and within that lab, I'm part of a sub-lab called the Indigenous Science and Ethical Substance Lab, where we think about questions around what might an ethical nail salon look like?

What might an ethical nail product look like?And that's kind of part of my research lab, and our work towards thinking about this question of ethical substance and what is an ethical substance. My work is in [00:03:00] partnership with a community-based organization called the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Center, uh, that is located in Toronto, um, as well as another organization, um, called the Nail Technicians Network.

I think it's important really to contextualize with Parkdale because Parkdale and the Nail Technicians Network, they are really at the forefront of advocating with nail, nail technicians on issues of health and safety in the workplace, but also issues around labor exploitation. 

Aaron Goodman: What are some of the core research questions that you have and, and what draws you to work with community nail salon workers? What are your major concerns? 

Reena Shadaan: I come into this world of occupational health after really thinking about environmental justice and working with communities who are on the front lines. Most notably, I worked for a long time with survivors of the 1984 Bhopal disaster. And so that work really was kind of a, a, almost like a crash course for me in, like, learning about [00:04:00] environmental justice, and one of the questions that always came up for me was questions around knowledge.

It was something that communities talked about a lot. How knowledge is valued, whose knowledge is valued, whose knowledge is diminished, specifically in relation to these, like, bodily health experiences, right? And I remember thinking, like, you know, the Bhopal disaster, which was such a visible disaster, such a huge disaster, um, that has, you know, repercussions to this day, but you still have those narratives around, you know, not quite believing survivors.

You know? Thinking survivors are maybe motivated by something else and not being authentic. This kind of dismissal of this knowledge that survivors have of, of their communities, of their bodies, of what happened to them. And so I kind of take those questions into all my research. That's one aspect of why it's so important to be community grounded.

Right? To think about the [00:05:00] expertise that communities bring to questions of environmental justice, questions of occupational health, and that very particular expertise and knowledge that communities have, that workers have that are, that is inaccessible to external scientists. So why do I wanna do this work?

I want do this work because I, I want to be part of some kind of material change that is guided by community, that is identified by community. 

Aaron Goodman: Let’s talk more in depth about your work with nail salon workers. What kind of symptoms and exposures do nail salon workers describe in your work? 

Reena Shadaan: I’ll contextualize it by talking a bit about the method. When I first started working in collaboration with Parkdale and the Nail Technicians Network, um, the method I came across that I really wanted to engage with was something called body mapping. It's not something I developed, um, of course. Um, it's something I actually [00:06:00] learned from an occupational hygienist and ergonomist named Dorothy Wigmore.

It was a group-based method. Nail technicians came together, um, in Toronto, and we had these, these blank visuals of figures of bodies, front and back. Then we gave folk stickers in different colors. So there were red stickers for aches and pains, blue stickers for any other kinds of health issues, green stickers were around how your body carries stress, yellow stickers around health issues you might be worried about.

And so what we saw in those body mapping sessions were certain themes that are actually quite consistent with a lot of the narratives coming out from nail salon workers organizations, from researchers who work with these organizations. So around musculoskeletal aches and pains due to the kind of awkward postures, the use of small tools, anxieties around chemical exposures.

Workers linked their chemical exposures to respiratory issues, to rashes and skin [00:07:00] irritation, to eye irritation. And also there were, uh, a lot of anxieties around cancer and reproductive health. So if you see the body maps, and remember the yellow stickers were the ones that, uh, were around like what are you worried about health-wise?

And in the body maps, there's sort of this concentration of yellow stickers to sort of indicate reproductive health worries. And so these were the workshops we did and then we, of course, talked it out, you know, what do folks mean? Why did you put the sticker here or there? And then the second step of that was something called hazard mapping, also from, you know, Dorothy Wigmore's method and practice.

And that was, okay, we've, we know, okay, these are the injuries and illnesses that come from this work, but where do they come from in the workplace? So things like the respiratory health issues, the skin issues was linked to the products. Things like the musculoskeletal aches and pains were linked to the manicure and pedicure stations because of the bending and the working at those [00:08:00] stations.

And then even the kind of anxieties around cancer and reproductive health were linked to the products. And then there were other health issues that came up that were connected to the precarity of the work. Right. It was something I didn't, I didn't think about until it was said to me over and over again, was around digestive issues.

I asked, "What do you think that's coming from?" And it was around, "Well, we don't have time to eat. We don't get breaks, or we're rushing to eat in between clients, or we're not eating all day until we go home." And so it's, like, causing these digestive issues. And so these are kind of the many sorts of health issues that came out of workers' narratives

Aaron Goodman: You note nail salon workers are experiencing health issues that affect many different body systems: neurological, respiratory, digestive, ocular, skin, musculoskeletal, [00:09:00] reproductive, endocrine, stress, anxiety around cancer. And I wonder if you encountered any narratives around experiencing anxiety around chemical exposures.

Reena Shadaan: I remember one of the body maps was by this worker who's a very young person, 19 years old, very young, very new to the industry. Mm-hmm. And on his body map, it has one side where it, um, he kind of talks about the worries he has, the anxieties about chemical exposure in general, as someone who is so new to this industry and potentially going to be in it for, you know, who knows how long. And so it's kind of come up a little bit in that way, around how long am I gonna be in this industry? How long am I going to be breathing in whatever I'm breathing in? And how might that impact my health? So those questions have come out quite a bit.

Aaron Goodman: We talked before this conversation, and you mentioned that nail salon workers are not [00:10:00] necessarily informed or aware of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, even though there seems to be a high level of crossover. Do you have a sense of whether Multiple Chemical Sensitivity is known at all among, um, nail salon workers?

Reena Shadaan: I don't know. Um, what I can say is that it hasn't come up in my interactions with nail salon workers. As you said, there is such an overlap in symptoms, and so it's, it's, it's something, yeah, it's, it's definitely something to think about. It doesn't really surprise me in the sense that a lot of people can take years or decades to, to put, um, things together.

Aaron Goodman: One of the aims of this podcast is just to help amplify narratives and, and help people connect the dots if it's relevant, creating more public awareness among researchers and people about MCS. 

Reena Shadaan: One of the things that we [00:11:00] learned from those first body mapping sessions was around this shared experience of illness and injury.

I remember in one of the sessions, one of the workers there said something like, "I thought I was the only one." Right? And so having these kinds of groups and podcasts and networks in which people can talk about their experience, I think it opens up space for others to feel not so alone and feel like, "No, this is not something individually about me.This is something that is part of a collective pattern that is happening. 100%.” 

Aaron Goodman: Do, do you experience people sharing that they have any shame or anxiety about sharing their symptoms? 

Reena Shadaan: Not so much with me. I think whether people want to share in their workplace with their colleagues, with their bosses is one, one story, and whether they want to share with a community health organization like the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Center or this workers collective, the [00:12:00] Nail Technicians Network, or myself, who is, you know, aligning with these groups and working with these groups, I think there's more openness to sharing in those environments.

But I think if those same questions were happening in a different environment, I think there may be some anxieties around sharing and some hesitancy. Uh, that makes a lot of sense because, of course, people talk a lot about the challenges of speaking openly about, about their MCS in the workplace. I started to think about, okay, you know, how can we engage in this, like, visual, these, like, um, very embodied methods, um, in a way that is not just hazard-focused, but more so gets at the, um, the wholesomeness, right?

The comprehensive experience of how nail technicians think about their work. And so that led to the shift from this initial kind of very hazard-focused body map, which is, as I said, important in its own way, to these more arts-based body maps. [00:13:00] And in these arts-based body maps, we asked workers what do you dislike about your job, but also what do you like about your job? How does your job make you feel? What are your hopes for the future in terms of your career, but in terms of life in general? Where do you look to for support? So there was this, like, comprehensiveness about those maps that was really beautiful and, you know, it wasn't just, stickers, but it was, artwork.

It was visuals. It was, you know, cutouts. It was little words. It was colors. It was just beautiful, um, just representations of what it means to be a nail salon worker.

Aaron Goodman: Reena, do you think that these techniques could be used by others, including people with MCS, to really develop greater awareness of their symptoms and share that knowledge with clinicians, researchers, policymakers, public?

Reena Shadaan: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and it is a tool that is quite, quite widely used, and so it's used in contexts of occupational health. [00:14:00] It is used in contexts of environmental injustice and issues around community experiences of environmental health or ill health. And so I absolutely think it could be a useful tool for folks experiencing MCS. 

Aaron Goodman: Do you think most people are aware of the hazards of toxics in nail salons? Yes and no. So yes, in the sense that I think that there has been a lot of organizing work by nail salon workers talking about their, their kind of exposure to chemical hazards, but also other, you know, pressures and exposures of the job.

Reena Shadaan: We've seen a lot of organizing work coming out of New York, coming out of California, now in Toronto with Parkdale and with the Nail Technicians Network. So I think these networks have done a really good job of, um, sharing what it means to be a nail salon worker and what, and, you know, as part of that job, what hazards might be of being a nail salon [00:15:00] worker.

And so I think yes, in that sense, there is more attention. But I also think there- there's still more work to be done. The specificity- of the hazards is one thing that folks might not know about. And that's part of the kind of the problem of chemical exposures too, especially when you have these cumulative exposures over long term.

It's so hard to trace certain illnesses to, you know, certain exposures. There's general awareness, in large part because of the work of these organizations sharing these narratives.. But I also think there still more room to grow. A lot of people go to them. I know most people with multiple chemical sensitivity probably would never step foot in them.

They may have in the past. We're aware because we would generally react to the chemicals in there. It's interesting to hear you that the workers themselves, through their open communication, are helping to raise awareness about the hazards. Why do you think lived experience, this [00:16:00] embodied knowledge, is so important in environmental health research?

Aaron Goodman: People with MCS have so much knowledge in our lived experience. Why is such knowledge important? 

Reena Shadaan: I think community-based knowledges are important because it is an expertise that is rooted in, one, the everyday of your work environment or your living environment, but also it contextualizes that in, like, a broader history, you know?

This kind of awareness of your environment, whether that's your external environment or kind of your bodily environment, that is inaccessible to external scientists, and this contextualization. One of the really, the things that was really interesting about the body maps, um, was that it got at, like, chemical hazards, and it got at, like, the aches and pains and those kinds of issues, but it got at, you know, conditions of labor exploitation that also are [00:17:00] part of the reason that we have this group of workers who are experiencing chemical hazards and other types of hazards in the workplace, right?

That kind of relationship between precarity and occupational hazards. And so there's a contextualization that you know, um, there's an expertise you bring that is grounded that just external folks can't bring. One theme in your work is that responsibility for safety gets shifted onto individuals, nail salon workers, particularly women, instead of governments or industries.

Aaron Goodman: How does that dynamic play out in nail salons, and do you think it reflects a broader social pattern around environmental illness, MCS? 

Reena Shadaan: Yeah. I do. So we see it a lot. We see it in labeling, right, and things like that, and it sort of, like, shifts responsibility down to the consumer. So now the consumer has to be the one to decide, I'm gonna purchase this thing, but not this thing.[00:18:00] 

But the thing is, there are barriers in access. There may be cost barriers in access. There may be barriers around what if that safer thing is just not available where you are, right? And so that means that certain people with certain means now have access to protections that others don't, and the others that don't, because theoretically the, those protections are out there and accessible, um, this group of folks that, that don't have access to those safer materials are now blamed for their exposures.

And so it shifts burdens down, um, to the everyday or to, to everyday people, which is an issue. So yes, there is a need for better regulation and enforcement of that regulation. Enforcement is, is a key thing here. But also, the question is also around kind of the failures of the state in terms of, not just in terms of failure, in terms of regulating or enforcing, you know, [00:19:00] environmental and occupational health protections, but really in a lot of ways perpetuating the harm that takes place.

If we, we wanna think beyond, you know, this model of neoliberal indi- individualization where we kind of download responsibility to the consumer or perhaps the individual worker, and then also beyond the state, like, what other kinds of solutions can we think about? One of the projects that I'm working on now, again, in partnership with PRAKDA, the Nail Technicians Network, and other folks, around thinking about worker-governed technologies, nail salon worker-governed technologies.

As I mentioned, one of the hazards of the work is the chemical hazards, and the chemical hazards come from the products used. And, um, and so this is a collaboration of nail salon workers, of community health workers, of occupational hygienists, students, faculty, material scientists, towards creating a worker-governed nail polish that is sustainable, that is non-toxic.

On one hand, the output is [00:20:00] hopefully this kind of worker-governed nail polish, but it's also on a broader level thinking about what does sovereignty look like when we think about tech and when we think about health and safety? What would worker-governed technologies and worker-governed processes look like and be like?

And that's something we're trying to think about with this project. One of our questions are, is around nail salons. What might an ethical nail salon look like? What might an ethical nail product look like? Your research highlights how race, gender, immigration status, and economic precarity shape who is most frequently exposed to toxic environments.

Aaron Goodman: Why are immigrant women workers so often concentrated in chemically sensitive industries like nail salons? 

Reena Shadaan: We see kind of this funnelling of immigrant women, racialized immigrant women into, or racialized newcomer women, I should say, into precarious work, right? And so women in [00:21:00] general are overrepresented in precarious work, but there's, you know, additional sorts of barriers and things that kind of push immigrant, racialized, and newcomer women into, into that world.

There may be language barriers. There may be issues around lack of social network and support. There may be issues around childcare. There may be not having professional networks, things like that. And so these, all these kinds of barriers that these women face that then push them into precarious work.

And precarious work can involve exposure to chemical hazards. It may involve exposure to other kinds of hazards. But it is partly, it is precarious because there is lack of protection in that work. And so we see kind of this funneling of these women into this work. And people with MCS, um, live in often a gray zone, if we can call it that, where institutions move slowly or demand overwhelming proof.

Aaron Goodman: Often we're forced or we're called to prove our illness, and that can be very challenging to do because [00:22:00] there isn't even a diagnostic code for MCS. And I wonder what barriers do nail salon workers face when trying to advocate for safer conditions or recognition of harm? Do they often have to prove their injuries, their chemical injuries, or health symptoms?

Reena Shadaan: It's a condition I feel that kind of transcends a lot of workplaces, but also frontline communities, around this having to prove harm to your body. And there are a lot of barriers from this, uh, especially when we think about, like, cumulative exposures, right? There's always questions, and, and it gets back to that, you know, what I mentioned a little bit earlier around kind of the failures of the state and the way in which the state really, in many ways, not just doesn't meet their obligations to protect, but also, um, perpetuates a lot of the harm.

And one of the ways that this harm is perpetuated is around, um, [00:23:00] this sort of, um, this burden of proof that is not even accepted. You know? So if a nail salon worker were to... You know, if I were to present the body maps, you know, with these narratives and these themes that come out on nail salon workers' experiences, it wouldn't be proof to the state that this is, that nail salon workers are experiencing these.

And so there's this kind of like these holes people have to jump through just to prove their health experiences. 

Aaron Goodman: You mentioned nail salon workers experience many symptoms that affect many different symptoms or systems in the body, and I wonder if that makes it even more challenging to prove the illness or the injury?

Reena Shadaan: Yeah, exactly, and the fact that things can come from multiple sources. So you know, a lot of workers talked about headaches at the job. Are the headaches coming from, you know, the odors? Are the headaches coming from the kind of workplace stressors? Is the headache coming [00:24:00] from maybe being a little bit dehydrated 'cause you weren't able to eat or drink anything that day?

There's such complexity in people's every day, and in some ways, the system is set up to kind of prove harm. It ignores that our lived experiences are so complex, and the way that we are exposed to things are complex. The headache may be a result of one of those things or all three of those things at the same time, but our systems in place are not kind of able to capture that complexity.

How can we rethink those systems to account for this complexity of our exposures? If we think of chemical hazards, you know, or like the example I brought of the headache, right? What particular chemical or what mixture of chemicals is maybe causing that headache, or is it something else? Is it something to do, as I said, with, like, not eating or drinking anything that day?

Is it something to do with the stress of the work? Maybe there was a difficult interaction with a client, [00:25:00] um, or a colleague or a, or, or the salon owner. And so I think it's important. We need to kind of also think about- How our systems are in place are ineffective to get at the complexity of what it means to live with different kinds of exposures.

Aaron Goodman: We've had other guests on this podcast who specialize in narrative medicine, who've talked about the importance of working with people, affected people, to help tell their stories, and for clinicians and researchers, policy makers, to listen to those stories. 

Reena Shadaan: Absolutely. You know, as I mentioned, people have knowledge about themselves and about their experience that is completely inaccessible to others.

It is a knowledge that is so contextualized. It's a knowledge that is, can say, you know, "This is, this kind of thing I've been experiencing for the past three days, well, I've never experienced it before. This is new. This is strange," right? So it's a knowledge [00:26:00] that is contextualized, that is historicized, that is just inaccessible to external people.

And so that expertise that comes from lived experience and experiential knowledge, from embodied knowledges, that should be valued in a certain way that it is not in our current sort of regulatory regime. As we wrap up, Rina, do you have any hope that there will be a time when nail salon workers will be able to work in environments that do not harm them, that the chemicals are safe or s- a lot safer?

Aaron Goodman: Will there ever be a time when people, the public, can access safe nail salons? 

Reena Shadaan: Yeah, I think so. I wouldn't do this work if I didn't have a sense of hope for the future, right? Absolutely, I think we can get there. You talk about your interactions and your conversations with nail salon workers and, how they report chronic health conditions.

Aaron Goodman: How does this affect their [00:27:00] daily lives, and what impact does that have on them? And when you're in these discussions, what's your sense of the weight of these injuries on these individuals? How challenging is it for these people to live with these injuries? It's, it's heavy. The experience is heavy for people.

Reena Shadaan: We talked a bit before about anxieties, so one of the things that came up, um, for a lot of the younger workers were around those anxieties that, you know, I'm starting to feeling a little bit of an ache here or whatever it might be, but I see, like, my colleagues who have been here for 10 years are, like, really feeling it.

So it's this anticipation that things are gonna get worse, right? That being said, you know, in some of the latter body mapping work we did when we talked about, you know, hopes for the future, there were a lot of people that talked about, "I want to continue being a nail salon worker. I want to own my own salon one day."

And there were some people who said, "I don't want to be..." You know, "This is a, you know, a temporary [00:28:00] measure for me. I want to move on to something else after." There's still folks that want to be in it, but it can be challenging, and there is very much an awareness of, this can affect my body in different ways, particularly over time, whether that's chemical exposures, whether that's aches and pains or something else.

Aaron Goodman: Do you want to talk briefly about your feeling towards the people who participate in your research, the nail salon workers? I imagine you have a lot of respect for them, and I imagine they're very courageous to, to come out and talk openly with you about their health challenges.

Reena Shadaan: Yeah. Extreme respect and gratitude to the workers I talk to, but also to the folks at the Nail Technicians Network, at the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre who, who do this work every day and who share with me really difficult experiences and feelings.

That kind of sharing that expertise with me and sharing that knowledge, it's [00:29:00] very, very meaningful to me. Because I can imagine there is probably a lot of pressures for them to stay quiet about their health experiences, would you say? I think so. I think so. I think that is true amongst lots of different workers, that there are pressures not to, you know, not say anything.

Going back to Parkfield, going back to Nail Technician's Network, the fact that they've created these spaces where workers can share those experiences with a sense of openness and find a level of, um, camaraderie and collectivity, and that I think is, is, is such a huge, a huge thing. 

Aaron Goodman: You’ve been listening to The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast. I'm the host and podcast creator Aaron Goodman. The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast is by and for the MCS community. The podcast is generously supported by the Marilyn Brachman Hoffman Foundation and listeners like you. If you wish to support the podcast, please visit [00:30:00] listen.chemicalsensitivitypodcast.org.

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Thanks for listening. The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast and its associated website are the work of Aaron Goodman, made possible with funds from the Marilyn Brachman Hoffman Foundation, supporting efforts to educate and inform physicians, scientists, and the public about multiple chemical sensitivity. The content, opinions, findings, statements, and recommendations expressed in this Chemical Sensitivity Podcast and associated website do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of its sponsors.