By
Marilyn Scallan in Smithsonian
Science News
Tattoos really are more than skin deep—and that raises questions about their safety.
Many
people enjoy the aesthetic beauty of tattoos. But the brightly colored inks
that make tattoos so vibrant and striking also carry health concerns, report
authors of a new paper related to tattoo safety.
According
to the Pew Research Center, 45 million Americans have at least one tattoo;
roughly $1.65 billion is spent on tattoos each year in the U.S.
Little
is known, however about the safety and long-term effects of the inks used to
create tattoos.
“Tattooing is perhaps the largest ongoing human experiment on the injection of particles and pigments with a complex chemistry into the skin,” said Lars Krutak, research associate in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
Krutak
is co-author of a paper in the The Lancet based
on a conference on tattoo safety held in Berlin in 2013 by the German Federal
Institute for Risk Assessment.
In
the paper, “A medical-toxicological view of tattooing,” the authors discuss the
composition and application of tattoo inks, their toxicology and removal, what
happens to the pigments and the potential risks from the ingredients in newly
developed tattoo ink colors.
Basically,
the scientists determine that very little is known regarding toxicity and
biokinetics (movement within an organism) of tattoo inks and whether they
eventually convert into toxic substances in the human body.
A 2010 survey in
Germany found that 68 percent of people with tattoos reported a complication,
mostly involving colored tattoos.
Although modern tattoo inks contain mostly
organic pigments, they also contain heavy metals, which may metabolize into
toxic substances.
“There
are no regulatory requirements concerning the production and sterility of
colorants, which can carry multi-resistant bacteria and carcinogens and trigger
serious allergic reactions and viral infections,” Krutak adds. “New research is
needed to contribute to the future development of safe tattooing, and this
article is a first step in the right direction.”
Tattoo
removal is also an issue. What happens to the pigments after they are removed,
usually by laser, is unknown. Laser removal involves several sessions yet
sometimes a tattoo is still partially visible, as inorganic pigments remain in
the skin.
Because
tattoo inks are classified as cosmetics in the U.S., they are not required to
be reviewed or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
With an
increasing number of people experiencing adverse reactions from tattoo inks,
the FDA is reconsidering this approach.
The
article’s authors argue for greater consumer protection— implementing national
and international standards, more stringent regulation and establishing legal
frameworks to control the use of toxic inks.
A
lifetime of internal exposure to a mixture of untested and unregulated pigments
necessitates much closer scrutiny, the researchers conclude.