Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Erasable tattoos
Smithosnian Magazine has published a collection of articles about tattoos, including an interesting story about a new ink that can be entirely erased with just one laser treatment. Typically, laser tattoo removals are iffy at best with results varying from acceptable to scarred messes. The pigment in the new ink, created by dermatologists from Duke University and Harvard, is entirely dissolved by laser light. The ink may be available as early as the middle of this year through the company the researchers formed, Freedom-2. Meanwhile, the company is also developing another ink that biodegrades over months without any laser treatment at all. From Smithsonian:
(Typical tattoo) ink rests in tiny beads that remain lodged in the skin after a tattoo is applied. During removal, a laser blasts these nano-sized beads with enough heat to make them rupture, releasing the ink into the body. Some of the potentially harmful ink ends up in the body's lymph nodes, part of the immune system.Link
Freedom-2 inks are made from safe pigments—the orange ink, for example, contains beta-carotene, commonly found in carrots—and trapped in harmless polymer shells. When a Freedom-2 tattoo is removed by laser, the ink dissolves biologically, leaving only the innocuous, invisible shells.
UPDATE: BB reader Mike Palmer says that claims about the potential health risks of chemicals in tattoo inks are questionable. He points to this April 2005 essay criticizing this Medical News Today article.
posted by David Pescovitz at 11:04:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments
