Just like ink spreading through the skin, tattoos have slowly permeated our culture. They are wearable art, fashion statements, memory preservers and symbols that tie individuals together. Twelve per cent of Europeans sport at least one tattoo and although winter is now creeping in, last summer’s fashion showed that Malta is no exception.
But what chemicals are in that ink? Isaac Wood, resident artist at Paceville’s Tattoo Factory, tells me that no client in Malta has ever asked. More worryingly, some tattooists may not even know as there is actually no related requirement in Maltese law.
Although tattoo legislation strictly regulates hygienic standards and tattooist capability, it is quite silent on the chemicals that can be used in tattoos. Only mentioned is that colours have to be bought from reputable suppliers and that they need to be traceable back to their source.
Malta doesn’t stand alone, as regulation across Europe is patchy and regulators are now scrambling to determine public health risks from this burgeoning tattoo demand. The European Chemicals Agency has recommended that the industry should be more heavily regulated and this month it will open a six-month public consultation on a related proposal for tighter EU-wide legislation.
All tattoo inks are composed of one or more solid pigments, suspended in a carrier solution. Sounds simple enough but there are many ways to produce the same ink colour and over 200 colorants and additives are currently in use.
The solid pigment can come from plants, minerals or synthetic processes, whereas the rest of the mixture is usually composed of some combination of water, witch hazel, alcohol, surfactants and other additives. The first three are carrier solutions, whereas surfactants allow the solid pigments to be suspended uniformly within the liquid, quite similarly to particles trapped within multiple, minute soap bubbles. Additives have a variety of uses depending on the chemical used. Some stop the pigment from sedimenting out; others bind pigment particles together and make the dye more easily injectable.
If you’re planning on going under the needle, dermatologists and tattoo artists advising the European Chemicals Agency recommend that all consumers ask their tattoo artist for proof of ink quality and don’t take anything for granted
In 2008, the Council of Europe established a benchmark (Resolution ResAP-2008-1) that lists almost 2,000 ingredients that shouldn’t be present in tattoo inks and allowable levels of impurities. It recommends that ink bottles should have best before dates, batch numbers, a list of ingredients and a guarantee of sterility. But this benchmark isn’t legally binding and, until now, the Council has left it up to European member countries to decide whether to write it into their national laws.
So far, only seven have followed suit and Malta is not among them. However, the Maltese Health Department does alert licensed tattoo studios whenever there are ink recalls, as part of a Europe-wide alert system called Rapex. Tattoo inks also fall under the General Product Safety Directive, which states that products placed on the EU market must be safe and, where necessary, accompanied by warnings related to their use. This subjective legal lacuna leaves it up to each tattoo artist to ultimately determine whether the quality of their ink is safe enough for their consumers.
It’s a heavy responsibility which many, such as Isaac, take seriously, sourcing inks which follow requirements of Resolution ResAP-2008-1. This takes on additional weight when considering that many tattoo inks on the European market are not actually produced for such purposes but repurposed from other industries, such as car paints, clothing dyes or plastic colourants.
As Jens Bergström, owner of Sweden’s Heavenly Ink Tattoo & Piercing studio, told C&EN Magazine: “Some of the inks on the market weren’t intended for tattooing. They just put them in a fancy bottle, put a dragon on the bottle and write ‘tattoo’ on it.”
Testing carried out on European inks has, in fact, shown the presence of chemicals with known human toxicity, such as heavy metals and carcinogenic polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Recent studies have also shown that tattoo constituents may migrate to a person’s lymph nodes over time.
So what should a tattoo afficionado do? If you have your heart set on a particular tattoo and don’t want to wait for tighter legislation, forewarned is forearmed. If you’re planning on going under the needle, dermatologists and tattoo artists advising the European Chemicals Agency recommend that all consumers ask their tattoo artist for proof of ink quality and don’t take anything for granted.
A good place to start is checking that the ink bottles conform to the recommendations of Resolution ResAP and that the tattoo artist has the accompanying Material Safety Data Sheet for each ink. A tattoo licence in Malta also ensures that the respective tattoo parlour is up to date in terms of any product recalls.
Asking these questions will encourage all tattoo artists to raise their game when it comes to sourcing of their dyes and reduce personal risk. In that manner you can concentrate on the statement that you’d like to make with your tattoo, rather than the message it may pass on further down the line.
Tessa Fiorini Cohen currently works within pharmaceutical regulatory affairs and is also a freelance science writer and university lecturer. She holds an MSc in Science Communication and blogs at www.sciencewanders.com.
