Tattoo and Piercing Safety
Tattoos and piercings have truly become the biggest fad. While you may be distracted thinking about where on your body, what place to have it done, who and what color or size, we often forget to wonder about safety precautions and potential health risks involved with attaining said ink blots or body holes. Aside from having the newest coolest piece of ink on your hipster landscape of an empty shell body, one should review the possible effects of these procedures.
Plausible Risks of Getting Inked and Pierced
Tattoos are obviously permanent designs that are injected repeatedly into the top epidermal level of our skin by ink-loaded needles. This procedure can have undesirable results like allergic reactions, excessive bleeding, infections, and even nerve damage. Here are other examples.
Blood-related diseases: if the tools have become contaminated with any form of infected blood or bodily fluids (i.e. HIV, hepatitis, tetanus, etc.), there is a high chance that the next user will become infected. So tattoo artists and piercers should always used sterilized and brand new needles and tools. Make sure of this.
Allergic Reactions: Anyone with a lowered immune system can react to the needles or the ink, causing possible infection and further unwanted after effects. Red dye is one of the usual culprits, depending on the quality of the ink, can cause itchy rashes and other types of skin reactions. Sometimes allergic reactions can be outrageously exaggerated and can even lead to collapse, respiratory failure, and even death. Be responsible, know what you are allergic to.
Nerve Damage: When an area is pierced or tattooed over and over, there is a chance one might lose their sense of touch or lowered sensitivity in that area.
Scar Tissue: Over piercing and tattooing can leave undesired scar tissue raised over their top layer of skin. This is skin damage.
Skin infections: Bacterial infections can sometimes occur due to poor post-tattoo care. Signs of swelling, hives, rashes, redness, severe itchiness and pain, sometimes causes pus build up to occur.
Safety Measures
Before getting your new angel wing Tats, or those black med – size gauge earrings in, try to run through the to-be-mentioned safety precautions.
Do your research. Make sure you know what is involved with getting new ink and piercings. Look up the proper procedure for caring for and possible health risks.
Go to a trusted place. Now there are plenty of friends of ours that have had work done in multiple places. Ask via word of mouth as well as doing your own research on the artist or the studio where they follow a good standard and clean practice.
Make sure the artist is sterilized as well as their tools before you start. Gloves must be worn by artist, and all needles and tubes should be new and/or sterilized fully, and then disposed of responsibly after done with use.
The ink used during the tattooing process should be in a disposable plastic container, and not straight from the bottle, and leftover contaminated ink should be thrown away after use. Also make sure the artist uses premium tattoo ink. Cheap ink will fade and bleed out and will require you to have it redone thus increasing the chances of infection.
When getting body piercings, try to avoid piercing guns as they cannot be well sterilized and are not for body piercings.. Piercing guns are for the ear lobes only.
Any jewelry used to do the piercing/s should be hypo-allergenic, sterilized, and should be the right gauge size for you. Do not settle for wrong piercing gauges and unsterilized equipment.
Lastly, pick a good design. Picking something that means something to you will usually last longer because you thought about it for awhile. Tattoos are permanent and one should never, excuse my pun, but, Jump the gun. The more you have to touch up a fresh piece of ink, the higher your chances are of infection.
So be smart, take your time, which is to say do not rush. I can think of no greater regret than a bad tattoo, of a person’s name you don’t care about anymore, or an ugly butterfly on the wrong part of your body. A little patience goes a long way.
