Everybody Has A Tattoo, But Nobody Talks About The Side Effects

No one really knows what the long term effects of tattoos are.
Tattoo health and safety regulations
tend to focus on short-term risks like infections, but
little is actually known about the long-term risks of
living with ink under your skin, according to a new
review in The Lancet.
"Almost everybody these days has a tattoo, and nobody
is talking about the side effects of ink deposits," said
senior author Dr. Andreas Luch of the German Federal
Institute for Risk Assessment in Berlin.
"There is no proof that these ink ingredients are safe,
being injected into the body," Luch told Reuters Health.
Between one and five percent of tattooed people suffer a
bacterial infection, and some people can have allergic
reactions to the ink, according to the report.
Those are short-term effects. It is harder to measure the
long-term effects of ink since tattoo inks are in most
countries classified as cosmetics, Luch said.
Since the inks are classified as cosmetics, their long-
term toxicology can't be tested in animals, Luch said. In
his opinion, tattoo inks should be a completely different
product category.
The skin barrier effectively keeps surface cosmetics out
of the body, he said.
But tattoo ink is injected into living tissue, which
contains blood vessels, nerves and immune cells.
"We need to assume that all of these ink ingredients,
including preservatives, processing aids or whatever,
will become systemically available in the body over
time," Luch said. "Regulation based on cosmetics is
insufficient."
Examining the bodies of the deceased who have had
tattoos for decades has shown that up to 90 percent of
the ink has disappeared from the skin, he said.
"We cannot answer the question what is going to
happen with these inks," whether they accumulate in
organs over time or are excreted, Luch said.
Similar questions remain for laser tattoo removal: when
the pigments are fractured and fragmented under the
skin - where do they go - he added.
"In the U.S. the (Food and Drug Administration) has the
authority to regulate inks, but is not currently doing so,"
said Dr. Michi Shinohara, a dermatologist at the
University of Washington in Seattle who was not
involved in the review.
"Regulation of tattoo parlors and tattoo artists is left to
the states, and the requirements for operating vary
widely from very minimal (bloodborne pathogen training)
to fairly complex (hundreds of hours of apprenticeship),"
Shinohara said.
There are no industry standards for ink ingredients, the
industry is minimally regulated, and few problems with
tattoos are reported to authorities, she said.
Modern tattoo inks mostly contain organic pigments, but
can also include preservatives and contaminants like
nickel, arsenic and lead, Luch and his coauthors note. In
one study in Switzerland, preservatives banned for use
in cosmetics were found in 14 percent of tattoo ink
samples.
Reactions tend to be more common from colored inks
than from black and white ones, Luch said.
Tattooing has been going on for at least 5,000 years, but
has become a modern trend, with roughly 120 million
people in the western hemisphere having at least one
tattoo, Luch said.
"The acute risks are well known," including pain,
bleeding, infection and allergic reaction, Luch said. "The
tattooist at least needs to explain that something like
this could happen," he said.
But long term risks, like organ toxicity or cancer, are
still unknown, he said.
"It's an individual decision, we cannot tell someone not
to get a tattoo," Luch said. "I wouldn't like to have a
tattoo on my skin, but if a person likes colored skin,
what can I say?"
It's not necessary for people to stop getting tattoos,
Shinohara said, "but I think people should be smart
about it - research the parlor, ask about any recent
problems, follow the aftercare instructions and report
immediately to the tattoo artist and a physician for any
problems that occur after tattooing."