Everyone enjoys a little time at the spa, and even little things like letting someone else paint your nails can feel like a real luxury now and then.

It makes sense that people would want the results to last as long as possible, but it turns out the UV nail dryers that set the popular gel nails might be doing quite a bit of not-so-invisible harm.

In fact, recent research suggest those dryers could damage the DNA in our hands and lead to mutations – which could lead to cancer.

While UV rays are known to be carcinogenic, there hasn’t been any significant research into how that radiation might affect skin cells until now.

Author Ludmil Alexandrov, a cellular and molecular medicine professor, thought it was high time someone looked into it.

“If you look at the way these devices are presented, they are marketed as safe, with nothing to be concerned about. But to the best of our knowledge, no one has actually studied these devices and how they affect human cells at the molecular and cellular levels until now.”

The researchers exposed both human and mouse cells (human skin keratinocytes, human foreskin fibroblasts, and mouse embryonic fibroblasts) to the UV levels emitted from nail polish drying devices.

They found mitochondrial and DNA damage, as well as cell death.

In fact, 20-minute sessions under the dryer every day for three consecutive days led to between 65%-70% cell death.

The damage seen in the remaining cells wasn’t always repaired, which led to mutation like those seen in human skin cancers.

This is admittedly more than the average most clients receive, which is about 10 minutes for a single manicure session.

However, there have been reports by people who get regular gel manicures, like pageant contestants and estheticians, getting rare finger cancers.

More research is needed to draw a direct line between the UV exposure and cancer risk, and a long-term study is currently in progress.

“Our experimental results and the prior evidence strongly suggest that radiation emitted by UV-nail polish dryers may cause cancers of the hand and that UV-nail polish dryers, similar to tanning beds, may increase the risk of early-onset skin cancer.”

That said, they definitely believe their findings are concerning.

“Nevertheless, future large-scale epidemiological studies are warranted to accurately quantify the risk for skin cancer of the hand in people regularly using UV-nail polish dryers. It is likely that such studies will take at least a decade to complete and to subsequently inform the general public.”

You might want to chill on the gel manicures.

Especially if you’ve got a family history of cancer.

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