Tattoo parlors have come a long way, but there are still some serious safety considerations that you should think about the next time you’ve have a few too many margaritas and are looking to get a parrot inked on your shoulder.
The fact of the matter is a lot of bad, bad diseases get transferred by dirty needles - such as HIV and hepatitis - and tattoos are inked into (not onto) your skin with a needle.
See the need for concern here?
However, tattoos are still as popular as ever, margaritas or no margaritas involved. You still see your average 19 year old sorority babe strutting around on the beach with the tattoo splayed across her lower back, or the fraternity dude with the barbed wire wrapped around his bicep.
That’s not to mention all of the moms and pops out there with ink, the bikers, the athletes, and everybody else who finds decorating themselves with ink cool or artistic.
It's no wonder, then, that what is popular now has actually been popular for thousands of years and isn't a fad. Now however, modern science makes it tonnes safer and a tad (but only a tad) less painful.
The key to tattoos is that a needle injects the ink into your skin. The tattooist leads the needle over your skin at a safe, controlled speed. It can take anywhere from a half-hour to several sessions of hours at a time, depending on how big a tattoo you’re getting. After it’s all done and over with in the tattoo parlor, your skin can take between 7 to 10 days to heal and will be sore to the touch initially.
Back in the days when tattoos had a wane in popularity, and only punks, bikers, and other “crazy” people were getting them, tattoos got a bit of bad name. Mainly, the whole issue surrounded around whether or not tattoo parlors were actually clean and safe. There were even outbreaks of disease associated with less than stellar parlors.
And this concern only grows in modern times, with all of the new superbugs that are floating around society.
There are a host of viruses and bacteria that you can be infected with. We’re talking hepatitis B, which has been reported as having passed from a tattoo needle. Though it would be possible for hepatitis C and HIV to pass from a needle into your skin as well, no such cases have been reported.
It could be that today’s modern tattoo parlors take great pride in their work and the cleanliness of their facility. It could also be that state and local health departments have regulations that they use to govern tattoo parlors and keep them clean, and that they also enforce these regulations.
A worthwhile piece of information for you to know is that you can actually check with the health departments near you to get a rundown on the safe, as well as the unsafe, parlors in your area.
You can also look into an organization called the Alliance for Professional Tattooists, which is a nonprofit organization set up to develop sanitation guidelines for its members.
Of course this all makes sense to you now but if you follow the traditional route for choosing when and where to have a tattoo applied - after a few too many margaritas - you may not be thinking quite so clearly!
Ouch!!
