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HIV from nail salon?
I got my nails done today and when they were sanding my nails (using the rotating tool, it's called a dremel I believe) they scratched me on my cuticle. I wasn't actively bleeding but the area is tender and red now. I don't think they cleaned the dremel, honestly, and now I'm terrified of contracting some kind of illness.
Can HIV be transmitted this way if an infected person's blood was on the tool?
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I will add to what Razhie said by saying it is highly unlikely to get AIDS from a manicurist's tool as the virus does not live long outside the body. If there was any blood on the tool it would have been dry blood and the virus would have been dead for some time once the blood drops below body temperature.
There are some viruses such as the common cold virus that can live outside the body for some time. Washing of hands and using hand sanitizer during cold and flu season can lower your chances of catching these illnesses.
The Dremel power tool was not meant to be used on people. Why your manicurist has chosen to use it is beyond me. This tool with the proper attachments can cut metal or sand anything from wood to metal. It has attachments for wire scrapping and buffing though I would never use the buffing wheel on a human as it turns for to fast. This tool is for intensive purposes a home industrial tool.
I would suggest you think about finding a manicurist who does things the old fashion way, by hand, It is safer. You don't know what other shortcuts this manicurist is taking that may not be in your best interest.
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No.
No one in the world is known to have been infected by HIV by such a superficial scratch like you describe. HIV doesn't survive for very long when exposed to open air, and it can be killed by normal, boring old washing with water. In a laboratory environment, or in a sealed syringe, HIV has a very long lifespan, but on a manicurists tools that are soaked in disinfectant or left open to the air? That is just not going to happen.
Even if, theoretically, there was some active HIV virus on the tool, which is insanely unlikely to begin with and would have had to happen within minutes if not seconds of the tool being used on you, you still probably couldn't be infected by it, because an infection requires a certain amount of the virus (one or two cells will not an HIV infection make), which needs to enter your blood stream (and a scratch is probably not going to allow that), and then find the correct kinds of cells to attack . Not going to happen.
Manicures don't put you at risk for HIV. There are other diseases and infections that can be transmitted by unclean tools so it is still important to go to a manicurist who is clean and careful with well sterilized equipment, but HIV is just not one of the risks that is there.
The bigger question you may want to ask yourself here, is why is this where your brain went?
EDIT: Adviceman must not spend much time at a manicurists. A manicurist dremel tool is a specifically made professional nail file. For some kinds of nail polish, they are the preferred filing method. Similar tools are used by doctors to file or remove nails when they need too. There is nothing inherently dangerous about it.
If you rather your nails be filed by hand, ask for that when you get there. If a place doesn't look clean, don't have your nails done there.
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