Pedicure Sanitation Protocol, The Key to Safe and Clean Pedicure Spas

Recently, I saw a story on the news, where a health inspector was going around and checking pedicure spas for sanitation. When the inspector got to the door and asked the salon owner, “Do you sanitize your pedicure spas?” the salon owner assured the health inspector that they do. However, all of the pedicure spas, that were checked by the inspector that day were found unsanitary, except at one location. Only one salon, which was tested, had clean, safe pedicure spas. So whose fault was this?

Everyday, people who are shopping for salon equipment and are in the market for a pedicure spa, worried about the type of pedicure spa they purchase as being bacteria problem. That is why my sales representatives are trained to educate the pedicure spa buyers that all pedicures, no matter the type, piped or no pipes must be sanitized through a strict protocol. The bottom line is having nail technicians who are regimented about doing the sanitation protocol. Last month, I read an article, where a pipe free pedicure caused an outbreak. These types of pedicures are new to the salon industry. My prediction is that after these types of pedicure spas are on the market for a few more years, lazy techs will cause more outbreaks in them than in the traditional pipe system. The piped system has been around much longer than the pipe free system so of course it has a larger history of unsanitary occurances.

The type of advertising some of my salon equipment competitors are using just kills me. They are showing germ pictures and leading on that “if you do not buy this, you will get this” or showing bio-film pictures of pipes and saying, “This is what you will get, if you do not buy our pedicure.” Yes, you will get bio-film if you do not CLEAN your pedicure, but they do not say that! It is the same with these company’s salon equipment products. They can harbor bacteria too if a cleaning procedure is neglected. New salon equipment, like pipe free pedicures, has not been around long enough to show a history with sanitation neglect.

When the state of California had the Watsonville outbreak in 2000, the health department’s final solution was to implement a cleaning procedure for all pedicure spas. They would have prohibited pedicure spas, if that was the problem. This shows, that the pedicure spa is not the problem, the sanitation protocol is! I like to think of a swimming pool in comparison to pedicure spas. Who’s at fault if a swimming pool is dirty? It is the pool’s fault or the people who maintain it?

Our company could have hopped on the pipe free pedicure bandwagon years ago. The pipe free jet makers really wanted our business but I didn’t go for that method for a few reasons. First, I did not like how some were using negative advertising with the germ pictures. Negative advertising works in the short term by creating panic in the salon equipment market. After the dust settles, I knew it was going to back fire and that these types of pedicures will have the same sanitation problems as the traditional systems do. The negative advertising is having a huge impact on the pedicure spa market by reducing pedicure sales for the pedicure equipment manufacturers and the salon itself. As a result, the national news media is now feeding on our industry’s issues. The second reason why I did not get into pipe less pedicures is that having no pipes is not true hydrotherapy. The pipe free systems have no air bubbles and no compairable power behind the water flow. These systems are just an eggbeater in the water.

So I decided to do some research on sanitation for pedicure spas. At the time, the ozone sanitation industry happened to be paying attention to the pedicure spa market. The germ pictures and all of the negative advertising caught their attention (as well as your client’s attention). Just to tell you a little bit about ozone: Ozone generators have been around for almost 100 years, sanitizing water. Ozone is mostly used for large water sanitizing applications, such as bottled water factories, waste treatment plans, and swimming pools. For these applications, it works by using large corona discharge units. The ozone generator manufactures were now driven to create a miniature corona discharge generator. They made this possible with integrated circuits, perfect for smaller units with only five to seven gallons of water. You see, ozone breaks down bio-film in addition to having a kill rate of 99.9% and the EPA approves it. Occasionally, I get talking with a pedicure spa buyer who has a swimming pool with ozone sanitation instead of chlorine. They say that their pool is crystal clean and they love how it sanitizes the water. They are always buyers of our pedicures spas. Safe sanitation for pedicure spas creates a safer nail tech and client environment. It is just like how a swimming pool is sanitized with ozone except with pedicure spas you drain all the water out after each use! Ozone generators are safer than chemicals and when combined with true hydrotherapy it proves to be a huge improvement in pedicure spa sanitation. For more information on ozone, click here: http://www.salonfurniture.com/store/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=OZONE

In addition to ozone, we insist additional sanitation protocol so that the pedicure is 100% safe and sanitized. You can see our cleaning procedure here: http://www.salonfurniture.com/store/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=CleaningProcedure

As an owner, I am extremely busy by managing the day-to-day activities at Design X Manufacturing, Inc. And as an owner, my theory is that the majority of the pedicure spa sanitation issues come from salon employees who are not implementing proper cleaning procedures. How can we all make sure that all pedicure spas are sanitized so that they are safe and the media can finally stay away from our industry? Both my salon equipment and pedicure spa business as well as your salon / spa will be effected if we do not prevent it, proactively. I will challenge anyone in the salon equipment industry that the problem with pedicure spa sanitation is with the sanitation protocol, not the type of pedicure spa you buy.

By: Robert Rosenberg
Vice President

This entry was posted on Friday, March 24th, 2006 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Ozone Sanitation, Pedicures, Pedicure Sanitation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.