American Apparel Nail Polish May Be Hazardous?

How many of you guys still bite your fingers when you have nail polish on? I’m one of them. Jezebel (via Racked) reported that American Apparel’s newly launched nail polish collection may be hazardous to your health and has been quietly pulled off the shelves. Once it hits the blogs, its not so “quiet” anymore…oh boy! Apparently employees were told there were “quality issues with the glassware,” but adding that it’s now considered “hazardous material” and can no longer be shipped. I wonder if I can get a refund for the bottle I bought, it’s still unopened (thank God).

Hello,

Due to some quality issues with the glassware used in the American Apparel nail polish we are requesting all bottles be taken off the sales floor immediately. We are working closely with our vendor to improve the product, and will be shipping an improved polish within 5-10 days. Please remove the nail polish from the floor and store it in the back. We will let you know how to dispose of it on the Monday back stock conference call.

THE ABOVE IS CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION FOR EMPLOYEES OF THE COMPANY ONLY. If customers inquire about the nail polish, please inform them that we are preparing our new stock and that they should check back soon. Also, let them know that we are launching 6 new colors for Spring! Give them a card to the store and encourage them to call and check if we’ve received our new shipment.

Your compliance is appreciated. Please contact me directly with any questions.

Thank you,

[Redacted]

Wow some responsible employee of AA leaked this info out. Let’s see how AA will react after reading it off the blogs! I’m sure they’re getting a ton of emails from concerned consumers right now.

UPDATE 01.27.2010: Read up on the updated post regarding AA Nail Polish, read here.

American Apparel Nail Polish May Be Hazardous?

By: retrogurl
Posted: 01.26.2010
Categories: beauty/fitness

8 Responses to “American Apparel Nail Polish May Be Hazardous?”

  1. miss a. says:

    This is serious disturbing.

  2. x says:

    its a problem with the bottle,
    not the nail polish.

    no biggie

  3. Eli says:

    I guess it would be a problem if they were leaving it on the shelf, but they’re not.

  4. Ashley says:

    Oh no, I have a bottle of that in “office”! I really love the color too! You would think AA would want this info to be public, to warn people who already bought it not to bite their nails!

  5. Erin says:

    That is really funny because this article was posted recently on an ecologically friendly blog:

    http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/american-apparel-new-nail-polish-is-eco-chic-and-cheap.php

  6. jon says:

    The nail polish is not hazardous to humans… The law states that all paint and paint like products be treated as hazardous for disposal purposes… Think about it, if AA threw out 1 million bottles of nail polish in to regular garbage dumps the chemicals in it would end up in the environment…
    THAT would be irresponsible.
    Stop being such alarmists…

  7. Ryan says:

    Jon is correct. The voluntary recall is just related to the bottles – we weren’t totally happy with how they were handling in shipments and in the stores and pulled them all. The polish is and has always been totally safe. We just don’t want 280 stores getting rid of their bottles however they see fit. We want to make sure it gets down properly and appropriately.

    Here was our response this morning, I don’t mean to be too forward, but I feel that your readers deserve a correction. And yes, you can trade your bottle (opened or unopened) in for two new bottles as soon as they’re back in stores.

    -

    After receiving a few reports of bottles breaking, we made the internal decision to do a voluntary recall of the bottles on both a retail and public level.

    We chose this small US manufacturer to produce our nail polish because we support their business model and have a fondness for family who runs it. However, one of the realities of all manufacturing is first-run glitches. We worked all last week with the manufacturer to make the improvements necessary for the second run. Another reason we sought out a US-based company is so we would be able make changes and now, we can investigate what went wrong as quickly as possible. We still believe in the factory we’re working with and the new polish will be in stores within the next two weeks.

    We will offer an exchange of two new bottles or a $10 giftcard for anyone who brings in a unit from the original run or a receipt.

    On another note, one thing we’re taking very seriously is the disposal of the bottles we had in the stores. Even though our polish was DBP, toluene, and formaldehyde-free, we don’t want our stores just tossing it in the trash. We’re using our internal shipping and distribution line to arrange a pickup and removal of the polish to make sure it gets done right.

  8. Jen says:

    My sister worked there and said the bottles were exploding.

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