If you want to get comfortable and wait for your gel polish to air dry, you need to know that you can wait forever, because that’s never going to happen. Unlike regular nail polish, gel nail polish needs UV light to dry. But this is not enough. The ingredient that changes it all is a photoinitiator, which in most cases is benzoyl peroxide. The photoinitiator absorbs the UV lights starting the polymerization process, i.e. the solidification of the nail polish. In the gel nail polish, the benzoyl peroxide is mixed with a form of plastic called methacrylate that makes the gel more flexible.

To protect our health and our planet, the European Commission banned the use of what is called the Toxic Trio (toluene, formaldehyde and dibutyl phthalate) in nail polish in 2004. Compared to Europe, the United States has not restricted the use of these ingredients in cosmetic products. But despite this, manufacturers are trying their best to move towards more sustainable products. Apart from using more sustainable packaging or alternatives to plastic caps, they have eliminated this toxic trifecta from their formula, creating eco-friendly water-based nail polishes and using as few chemicals as possible or none at all. But this is true up to a point, because in order for it to adhere to the nail, you must always use plastic.