Nail Salons / Hair Salons Licensing / Rego

This report covers the problem in nail salons.

Their ‘professional organisation’ could be seen as wanting to tighten standards or protecting their own depending on one’s outlook, but

In VIC some formats can get perpetual registration while others just need to file forms and pay their fees. Nothing I can find about inspections. As with most of the ‘trade oversights’ once a qualification is achieved it is about the annual fees in government accounts, not about ‘standards’.

How many have and use autoclaves? How many use any kind of sterilisation between customers?

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Infection is a risk when ever the skin is broken and pathogens get into the wound. It can occur when gardening, cutting onself on something not sterilised, from splinters or ingrown nails etc.

I think it is unlikely that licensing hair/nail salons will be the answer, as the risk of infection has little to do with a license but the hygiene practices employed by individual salons.

What may be more effective is insurance companies mandate through the condition of the policy cover that a salons must employ industry standard hygiene practices (some alluded to in the report such as autoclaves), but there are many others such as

  • Cleaning and sterilising of ones hands (customer and technician) before treatment. Say similar to that by a doctor before a needle or minor surgery;
  • Ensuring all products and equipment is effectively sterlised prior to use;
  • Ensuring that all equipment is used only on one customer, to which afterwards it is sterilised;
  • Ensuring equipment post sterilisation is handled and stored to prevent recontamination;
  • Refusing to work in hands which have an obvious risk of infection - those with sores/cuts/abrasions, chewed nails, generally dirty etc
  • Ensuring all staff is adequateoy trained on procedures for maximising hand hygiene and minising risk of infection.

If the insurance industry took a stand to minimise their own risks, this would create change within the industy.

Organisations like Hiair and Beauty Australia could also develop a code for the industry with minimum standards for salon hygiene. This code could be used by insurers and the industry as the basis for change.

Regulating/licensing in itself won’t create change in the industry as rogue operators will still operate until they are caught out or have an incident. In such cases the likely outcome would be a fine and the operators allowed to continue on their merry way afterwards (particularly since the ocassional fines are likely to be less than the cost to comply).

Also what are the real risks of infection from say a salon compared to say going to your local nursery and touching plants, potting mix and other materials. Action must be based on risk, not on publicity.

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That resembles self policing doesn’t it? Assume you get a serious infection but the salon was either uninsured or not working within policy T&C, thus there is no insurance in reality even though premiums may have been paid.

Licensing in Australia is mostly for show since once a person gets a license for whatever, there is usually no periodic inspections or review unless there are specific court cases. Periodic inspections required for licensing would be an improvement because sterilisation equipment would at least need to be in the place of business and functional.

After a serious problem the silks get involved, the owner/operator goes bankrupt. Problem addressed?

That is under your control rather than someone cutting your hair, nails, beard, or whatever with sharp instruments or even razors that were used on another, no cleaning necessary?

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It might be an improvement if they are done regularly and it is possibly not the inspection of equipment, but record keeping of its use and also demonstrated implementation of good sterilisation practices.

Who is also going to pay for it. For example, there are 210 nail salons in the greater Brisbane Area (number from whitepages search). The same area has six councils (Brisbane, Redlands, Logan City, Moreton, Ipswich and Gold Coast. This corresponds to about 35 salons per local government area. If each Council had its own inspection team, one could assume it would comprise of a minimum of 3 persons (2 field officers and one admin/manager support). Say these work on average 0.5 of their time for salon inspections, this means 1.5 FTE per local government area or about 9 FTE over the greater Brisbane region. Average salary is likely to be between $70-80K + extras (super long service, sick leave, vehicle etc)…so we could reasonable assume that the cost per FTE would be in the order of $100-120K. Across the region this would correspond say to about $1M per year. Spread over $210 salons, the licensing fee would need to be at least around $5000 per salon to be cost neutral (assuming that ratepayers don’t want to subsidise the industry). This is a significant cost to the business and would be some of the highest license fees charged by Council.

This does show that licensing (user pays system) would be significant impost on the nail salon business and possibly wouldn’t reduce the risks. If salons had to pay $5000 per year, they would cut costs elsewhere and I suspect that hygiene would be first on the list.

Not necessarily, a nursery is full of living organisms ready to live on a human or cause a disease. These can be airborne (say potting mix dust or water spray), through contact with infected materials (it is a welcoming place for bacteria and fungi to live as it is often humid, warm and had heaps of food to eat) or through accidental injury (say scratching oneself on a rough pot or against a nursery rack for example). The only real way to avoid these would be not to visit a nursery, just like one has a choice not to visit a nail salon.

Everywhere we go there are risks of injury and infection. I suspect that a salon would be lesser of a risk than many other places we visit and any action should be based on risks, not because it gets media attention. Otherwise we will end up in a true nanny state.

That is not a problem in jurisdictions that have strong consumer protections in place. Inspections are borne mostly by the licensing regimes, sometimes subsidised by taxes, and sometimes by taxes. Some people feel there is value in paying more when there is something like safety or piece of mind in return.

or possibly would mitigate risks as well as actual cases. I would think few cases are reported because most are comparatively minor being treated with common antibiotics or first aid things. In these days of quite nasty blood born diseases that can even stay on surgical instruments are you happy to always take the chance?

The #1 cause of death is life. You can take anything you want to the Nth degree to try to discredit putting and keeping responsibility and liability on those who should have it. I suggest @karen.seager’s sad story about the painter and how well that has worked out for her would be sufficient to accept our laws and oversights are hollow at the end of the day. They work when those involved are of good will, but some of us are obviously not.

Yes, the media rarely contributes to calling attention to things that might need attention.

We can each take care of ourselves then, because we can always trust business to do the right thing, and thus every person for themselves by themselves with the best silk they can afford when required.

BTW, who would think there would be a serious structural risk in a high rise flat? Self certification has worked so well.

Our positions are each well presented and others might add their voices pro or con.

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