Tattoo Taboo?

I guarantee you know someone who has a tattoo. Once the sign of the rebel, tattoos are now mainstream. In fact, 40% of people under 40 have at least one tattoo. Just 10% of people 41-60 have one.

 

I have two tattooed friends. Both are women and both tatts are located above the butt (why do people think that's a good piece of real estate for décor?). One's a Tweety bird, the other an "om" symbol. 

 

The 10/13/07 Science News covered a new kind of encapsulated tattoo ink that can be easily erased later in life. Rather than using a laser to break down tattoo inks into a molecular size small enough for the immune system to mop up, the new inks are enclosed in tiny spheres. If the tattooed gets sick of their tatt, just one laser treatment pops the spheres and the ink dissipates to nearly invisible in just weeks. Traditional tattoo inks require many, sometimes painful, laser treatments that can cause skin damage or discoloration—and sometimes they don't work.

 

A recent Harris poll found that 17% of the tattooed regret having gotten a tattoo. The most frequent reasons were: the tattoo included the name of someone the tattooed no longer care about, the owner didn't like the tattoo anymore, the tattoo faded, or the tattoo "was stupid".

 

A sidenote: tattoo ink falls under the jurisdiction of the FDA, but they don't regulate it and tattoo ink manufacturers keep their recipes closely held secrets. A study at Northern Arizona University tested 17 inks from 5 manufacturers and found that some contained heavy metals like lead and carcinogens. One carcinogen was originally manufactured as a pigment for automobile paint. Mmm, mmm good!