Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Tattoos and you: Con
Want a tattoo? You won’t when you’re 50. If you are curious what a tattoo looks like after it ages and stretches, take a thick rubber band, write on it and stretch it out to the limit. There’s your skin and your “oh so beautiful” tattoo after a couple of decades down the road.
Even though stretched skin and a distorted tattoo are later problems, they are tiny compared to the risks that come with getting a tattoo.
The greatest concern of getting a tattoo these days is contracting an infectious disease through the use of unsterile needles, ink and other equipment. Two of the most serious are Hepatitis, a disease of the liver, and HIV.
Aside from these problems, do you know what it takes to remove a tattoo?
There’s Dermabrasion, where the doctor takes the equivalent of a Dremel rotary tool and literally sands the tattoo area down until it is gone. About five layers of skin are removed during this process.
Then there are two procedures that involve a scalpel cutting the tattoo away. One of the methods uses dry ice to freeze the tattooed area, then cutting away the dead skin and tattoo. For the other method, the area of the tattoo is numbed and then cut away. After either one of these procedures, the cut area is covered by a skin graph taken from another part of the body.
Finally, with the advancement of technology, lasers have entered the world of tattoo removal. This method is quite simple. The laser burns the ink particles until they are absorbed into the body and removed by bodily processes. However, this process can leave permanent scars.
Overall, tattoos might look cool and they might make a statement you want to make. But many risks and problems come with getting one, especially when it comes to removing them.
