Elsevier

Science of The Total Environment

Volume 407, Issue 23, 15 November 2009, Pages 5997-6002
Science of The Total Environment

Market survey on toxic metals contained in tattoo inks

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2009.08.034Get rights and content

Abstract

Tattooing practice is adopted worldwide and represents an important socio-cultural phenomenon, but, the injection into the skin of coloring agents as metals might pose a risk for allergies and other skin inflammations as well as for systemic diseases. In this context, 56 inks for tattooing purchased from 4 different supply companies were analyzed for metal concentration. Aliquots of pigments were microwave digested by nitric acid, fluoridric acid and hydrogen-peroxide and Al, Ba, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Mn, Ni, Pb, Sb, Sr and V were quantified by sector field inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Limits of quantification varied from 0.07 ng/ml (Cd) to 10 ng/ml (Al and Fe); recoveries ranged from 92% (Cd and Sb) to 109% (Sr); within- and between-day precisions were 3.2% and 4.67% on average.

The relative contribution of metals to the tattoo inks composition was highly variable between brands and colors, even in pigments with the same base color. Elements found as the main components of inks were as follows (in µg/g): Al, 1.59–5893; Ba, 0.058–1226; Cu, 0.076–31,310; Fe, 0.717–88,443; Sr, 0.174–36.4. Toxic metals as Cd, Mn, Pb, Sb and V were over the 1 µg/g in a few cases, while Hg was in traces. Among the allergenic metals, Cr was the highest (0.315–147 μg/g), followed by Ni (0.037–9.59 μg/g) and Co (0.0028–6.43 μg/g) then. On 56 tattoo inks, Cr, Ni and Co exceeded the safe allergological limit of 1 µg/g in 62.5%, 16.1% and 1.8% of cases, respectively.

Introduction

The practice of skin tattoos has been adopted for several centuries worldwide assuming different significance passing from one country to another. Tattoos have been used to express not only a simple fashionable body ornament, but also the membership to a particular socio-cultural group.

Nowadays, epidemiological findings showed that the practice of depicting the body is even more adopted by people. Mayers et al. (2002) reported that the 25% of 302 subjects of a small Midwest private college had at least one tattoo, while Forbes (2001) highlighted that the prevalence for tattooing among 491 university students in New York State was of 23%. In 1995, on 1762 students the proportion of adolescents with a tattoo was 9% higher with respect to that in 1993, while the average age at first tattoo dropped from 16 years to 14.5 years (Armstrong and Murphy, 1997). In Italy this practice is largely adopted among 12–18 years old students; at national level, on 3800 students the 6.6% was tattooed (7.2% were males and 5.7% were females) (Eurispes, 2002), and in one Italian region the 4.8% of 496 interviewed students (3.0% males and 6.0% females) had at least one tattoo (Boncompagni et al., 2005).

In permanent tattoos and permanent make-up, the pigments are deposed in the dermis by means of a needle. This process ensures that the pigments cannot be removed and simultaneously the organism is exposed to the ingredients in the tattoo colors in a very direct way and for prolonged time. In this context, the main components of colors are metals. In fact, dichromate-, Co-, Cd- and Hg-salts were considered the base for green, blue, yellow and red colors, while iron oxide, titanium dioxide, C and Mn are prevalently in the brown, white, black and violet inks (Kaatz et al., 2008). In addition, organic pigments and metals (i.e., Al, Ca, Cd, etc.) were often combined to create different hues, brightness or lightness shade of colors (Duke et al., 1998). The intimate and continuative contact between skin and colors can create in many people metal-related skin inflammation such as allergic, eczematous, lichenoid, psudolymphomatous or granulomatous reactions due to a one or more metals contained in pigments (Blumental et al., 1982, Sowden et al., 1991, Morales-Callaghan et al., 2006, Eun and Kim, 1989, Rubianes and Sánchez, 1993, Bagnato et al., 1999).

Considering the wide diffusion of the tattooing practice and the serious problems for the human health, a strict legislation for colors used for tattooing should be mandatory. In fact, there are no coded rules that reported which raw materials are allowed and how to test the final product. In addition, in most cases is very difficult to retrieve the relevant ink ingredients because only relatively few manufacturers release the documentation. In this context, each National Health Service should collect ink samples at both suppliers and studios for tattoo to verify the metallic components with the aim of assessing the human health risks.

The aim of the present study was to ascertain which metals are present in tattoo inks available on the Italian market and at which concentration they are present. For this purpose, a method based on acid assisted microwave (MW) digestion and sector field inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (SF-ICP-MS) analysis for the simultaneous quantification of Al, Ba, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Mn, Ni, Pb, Sb, Sr and V in 56 colors for tattoos was validated.

This market survey represents a first step in the risk evaluation process regarding toxic metals in tattoos and health effects.

Section snippets

Samples, reagents and decomposition

A total of 56 colors were purchased from 4 different tattoo ink suppliers: 13 colors “Starbrite Colors”; 10 colors “Millennium Colorworks Inc.”; 13 colors “Intenze Prod.”; 20 colors “Diabolo by Deep Colours”. All colors were liquids. The samples were acid digested in a MW oven (Ethos 900-Mega II, FKV Milestone, Milan, Italy), ca. 0.25 g of pigment being weighed in a Teflon vessel to which a mixture of 4 ml of super-pure HNO3 (Romil, Cambridge, UK), 1 ml of supra-pure HF (Merck, Darmstadt, Germany)

Validation study

The method was validated for limits of detection and quantification (LoDs and LoQs), recovery and precision (within- and between-day). The LoDs and LoQs were calculated as 3.3 and 10 times, respectively, the standard deviation (SD) of 10 independent digested blanks. The recovery experiment was realized at one spiked concentration level in 5 independent digestion blanks. Within-day precision was determined by the measurements of a digested pigment 10 times on one occasion. Between-day precision

Conclusions

The practice of tattooing is largely adopted worldwide, but the inorganic components of pigments injected into the skin are known to cause chronic or systemic pathologies. The situation is troubled by the fact that no official controls on pigments used in tattooing practices are existing and this lack of controls does not make users aware about the risk for their health.

In this view, the aim of this study was to characterize the metal composition of 56 tattoo inks from market and to draw

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