If you’ve been saving your fingernail clippings and need some quick money, you should consider selling them as traditional medicine ingredients in China.
Fingernail clippings are usually discarded as disgusting pieces of trash, but according to Chinese traditional medicine, they are valuable ingredients in concoctions used to treat conditions like abdominal distension in children and tonsillitis. Companies producing traditional Chinese medicine reportedly purchase fingernail clippings from schools and villages, which they then wash thoroughly before drying and grinding them into a fine powder that gets mixed into various medicinal products. Because human adults only grow about 100 grams of fingernails per year on average, collecting enough to keep up with demand is a difficult task and the price of clippings is relatively high.
Chinese media outlet Kankan News recently reported that a Hebei woman was selling her fingernail clippings online, for 150 yuan ($21) per kilogram. She had been collecting them since childhood and had decided to make some money off of them.
The use of human fingernails in Chinese traditional medicine had slowed since the 1960s, when the growing popularity of nail polish began tainting the “merchandise”. Over time, other ingredients that provide similar effects were discovered, but fingernails never really went away. Apparently, they are making a comeback!
And before you even think about it, no, you can’t sell your toenails. Fingernail processor make it very clear that they check their stock very carefully and toenails are not accepted.
