Tattoo Ink Has A potential risk to your health!

Tattoos are especially prevalent among younger Americans, with nearly half of Millennials (47%) and over a third of Gen Xers (36%) saying they have at least one, compared to 13% of Baby Boomers and one in ten Matures (10%). Well, almost everyone I know has a tattoo :) Even Caroline Kennedy and Winston Churchill were tattooed.

A new study in the Nature journal Scientific Reports found that microscopic particles from tattoo ink can migrate into the body and end up in the lymph nodes of your immune system.

“When someone wants to get a tattoo... no one checks the chemical composition of the colors, but our study shows that maybe they should,” explains Hiram Castillo, one of the authors of the study, in a statement.

A tattoo is a form of body modification where a design is made by inserting ink, dyes and pigments, either indelible or temporary, into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigmentDespite this booming popularity, scientists still know relatively little about the effect of tattoo ink on our body and health. 

Some tattoo inks contain inorganic pigments and contaminants like nickel, chromium, manganese, or cobalt. One of the most common ingredients in tattoo inks is the white pigment titanium dioxide (TiO2). We come across this inorganic chemical constantly in our everyday life, from food additives to sunscreens to paints. German and French scientists have now looked at how TiO2 degrades into toxic impurities and how these nanoparticles travel to the lymph nodes where they accumulate.

“We already knew that pigments from tattoos would travel to the lymph nodes because of visual evidence: the lymph nodes become tinted with the colour of the tattoo. It is the response of the body to clean the site of entrance of the tattoo,” added Bernhard Hesse, study first author. “What we didn't know is that they do it in a nano form, which implies that they may not have the same behavior as the particles at a micro level. And that is the problem: we don't know how nanoparticles react.”.