Tattoos
How tattoos are done, what are the risks, and how they affect us in the long run.
How they are done A tattoo is a permanent mark or design made on your skin with pigments inserted through pricks into the skin's top layer. Typically, the tattoo artist uses a hand-held machine that acts much like a sewing machine, with one or more needles piercing the skin repeatedly. With every puncture, the needles insert tiny ink droplets. The process — which is done without anesthetics — causes a small amount of bleeding and slight to potentially significant pain. PHYSICALLY: The risk of getting a disease like Hepatitis from a tattoo artist that is not careful about sterilizing his/her equipment, the pain involved in getting one, the bleeding afterward
MENTALLY: Why would anyone think they need a tattoo to make themselves "better"? Also, if you get a tattoo because you think it's "cool" then you're applying the standards of the world.
SOCIALLY: People who have tattoos are often looked down upon as rednecks or low-lifes simply because they have tattoos, and people who have visible tattoos often get passed over for jobs by people who believe tattoos present an unprofessional appearance There are many things that tattoos can affect. They can affect they body and other people.
Even in otherwise hygienic tattoo parlors, the ink could harbor infectious bacteria.
Credit: Tatiana Morozova | Dreamstime
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When a cluster of skin infections in upstate New York last fall led back to one tattoo artist, local public health officials took the usual step of investigating the artist's hygiene practices. They found that all of his equipment and methods were sanitary, but the nationally distributed ink he had been using, even in unopened bottles, wasn't.
Soon, similar investigations in Colorado, Washington and Iowa turned up harmful strains of bacteria in three other brands of ink. At least 22 skin infections across the four states were linked to contaminated ink, according to research reported Wednesday (Aug. 22) in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The offending pathogen in the New York outbreak was identified as Mycobacterium chelonae, a relative of the bacteria behind tuberculosis and leprosy that is commonly found in tap water. Though M. chelonae is usually harmless to people with normal immune systems, when it's escorted beneath the skin by a tattoo needle, it can cause a painful rash that can last for months, requiring strong antibiotic regimens and sometimes surgery to eradicate.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), past tattoo-related Mycobacterium infections likely arose from the use of unsterile water as a
