It’s an art form that’s been around for thousands
of years and shows no sign of slowing down.
If you don’t have them, chances are your friends
or at least your favorite barista does:
Tattoos.
This week, we’re all about ink, so think carefully
about what you want on your body permanently
as we tattoo some knowledge on your brain.
(SPLASH INTRO)
Thousands of years ago, when hipsters of that
era were getting tattoos, many different
ingredients were used for inks.
Different colors came from ground up
natural products like copper, ashes, graphite, tree bark and woad.
Today our inks have evolved, and multiplied.
Tattoo artists use so many different pigments
for colors that if you have two different tattoos
from two different places, there’s a chance
that ink in your right arm is made up of
different stuff than that ink in your left arm.
No matter what the ink ingredients are,
it’s a straightforward recipe:
A solid pigment creates the color and is suspended in a liquid carrier.
Liquid carriers can include any on or combination of the following:
water, witch hazel, glycerine, propylene,
and alcohols anywhere from ethanol
to vodka to even Listerine.
There’s a wide variety pigments ingredients, too.
Here’s some of the different forms of black,
brown, red, green, blues, violets and whites.
Why are tattoos permanent?
So as you might know, skin cells live for about
two or three weeks, but tattoos last forever.
And if you’ve ever thought that tattoo
On your inner lip will disappear after
six months, you’re dead wrong.
It will never disappear… trust me…
To explain why tattoos are permanent
here’s Rachel Feltman from the Washington Post’s Speaking of Science.
Conveniently, she is in the middle of getting a tattoo:
“The tattoo needles, which have ink stuck
between them, are puncturing my skin about 50-3,000 times per minute.
They’re going through the epidermis and into the dermis.
They’re making holes there and capillary
action is drawing ink down into the dermis.
Now what makes a tattoo permanent is when
my immune system is trying to save me
from all of wounds that I’m suffering from.
Basically, every time the tattoo needle makes
a hole, macrophage cells will start to go
towards the wounds to try to close it up.
And, because the ink is a foreign invader, the
macrophage cells gobble it up to try to get rid of it.
But instead the macrophage cells with bellies full
of ink, get stuck in the gel-matrix in the dermis.
And they stay there pretty much forever, which is why the tattoo stays visible and permanent."
She makes it look so painless.
So when your tattoo is brand new, the ink is in both
the epidermis and the dermis layer of your skin.
But as the skin heals, the wounded epidermal cells
are shed and replaced with new ink-free cells.
This is why your tattoo looks more vibrant before it's done healing.
Your epidermis regenerates in about two to four weeks.
Over time, tattoos will fade as the body’s immune
system slowly breaks down the alien pigment
particles and the macrophages take them away to be destroyed.
But generally, the ink will stay with you
for most -- if not all -- of your life.
Trust me.
We’d like to give several shoutouts for people
who’ve made this episode possible.
First we’d like to thank Fatty’s Tattoos and the
very talented Sabrina Elliot for her tattoo work.
We’d also like to thank the Washington Post
and Post TV for working with us on this video.
For more information on tattoos, check our
Claudia Aguirre’s article and website.
We’ve posted the links in the description.
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If you have any topics you’d like to see us cover,
let us know right down there in comments
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Thanks for watching.