Read this article today from clickondetroit.com. Thought you all should see it as it may involve your health.
New research has turned up troubling details about chemicals in tattoo inks, including some endocrine disruptors and toxic metals, and a compound that has been called one of the most potent skin carcinogens. The FDA has launched an investigation into concerns about ink safety.
Tattoo ink trouble is nothing new. The inks, which are injected into skin with small needles, have caused allergic rashes, chronic skin reactions, infection and inflammation from sun exposure, said Elizabeth Tanzi, co-director of the Washington Institute of Dermatologic Laser Surgery in Washington, D.C.
A new study suggests that phthalates and other chemical ingredients may be responsible for those problems.
One of the chemicals found in black tattoo inks – benzo(a)pyrene – is a potent carcinogen that causes skin cancer in animal tests. Dermatologists have published reports in medical journals on rare, perhaps coincidental cases where melanomas and other malignant tumors are found in tattoos.
In July, scientists reported their discovery that the chemical dibutyl phthalate, a common plasticizer, along with other substances, are found in black tattoo inks. In the study of 14 commercially available inks, they found low levels of dibutyl phthalate in all of them.
These new found chemicals raise unanswered questions about more serious, long-term risks such as skin cancer.
“The substances found in the inks might be partially responsible for adverse skin reactions to tattoos,” wrote the dermatologists from Germany’s University of Regensburg.
For phthalates, which can mimic estrogen or disrupt testosterone, exposure of fetuses and infants is the major concern. In infant boys, prenatal exposure to dibutyl phthalate has been linked to feminization of the reproductive tract. In men, phthalate exposure has been linked to sperm defects and altered thyroid hormones.
But phthalates in tattoo inks may not carry the same risk.
“Phthalates are cleared from the body within hours, and unlike many phthalate exposures, those from tattooing will not be continuous,” said Shanna Swan, a reproductive epidemiologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York who studied the effects of phthalates on infant boys.
Phthalates applied to the skin in a lotion were absorbed and metabolized in a 2007 study, and the same thing is likely to happen with phthalates in tattoo inks, Swan said. ”While this is a potential source of high exposure, it might not last very long and may not present a risk to health,” Braun added.
More than 45 million Americans – including nearly 40 percent of adults in their late 20s – have a tattoo.
