Tattoos are visual reminders of ourselves in a place and time.
They're living artwork and carry a lot of memories, but sometimes YOU JUST DON'T WANT
HER NAME ON YOUR ARM ANYMORE.
Tattooing is thousands of years old.
The oldest known in-tact human body, the Ötzi ice man has tattoos -- and he's over 5000
years old.
Tattoos have a dark history, literally.
Dark.
Because they used to only come in one color, black, and they were used for spiritual or
healing purposes, to show status, or for fashion.
They've been done with sharpened rocks, sticks, metal tools and other implements, anything
to get the ink into the skin.
The tattoo machine we know today was invented in the late-1800s and was based on Thomas
Edison's automatic engraving machine; it uses a solid needle to inject ink into the skin
from 50 to 3000 times a minute.
The machine injects a drop of insoluble ink under the top layer of skin, the epidermis,
and into the more stable dermis -- about 1 millimeter into the skin.
The ink molecules cannot be digested by macrophage immune cells.
Instead, the cells consume the ink and then adopt that pigment and just hang out... which
is why tats don't break down too much over time.
That being said, 45 million Americans have tattoos, and according to the American Society
for Dermatological Surgery, 100,000 people got tattoo REMOVAL in 2011 -- up 20% from
the previous year.
Tattoo removal is a huge industry, because of how tattoos work.
The most well-known way to remove a tattoo is laser removal, which uses specialized laser
light to degrade the ink molecules.
Each laser treatment requires six or more weeks of healing, and each COLOR in the tattoo
requires different laser-light wavelength to break it down.
Neodymium-doped yttrium-aluminum-garnet or alexandrite lasers work for blue and black
inks, for example, but less well for reds.
There are over 1000 inks on the market, and the dermatologists doing the removal rarely
know which were used.
Once the treatment breaks them down, the body's macrophages can eat up the, now smaller, broken
inky bits.
Laser removal is sort of like a pencil eraser.
The darker and thicker it is, the harder it is to erase, and the more sessions it can
take.
Not to mention, if the wrong wavelength of laser is used, permanent scarring can occur.
Other methods include dermabrasion, which is essentially scouring or sanding off the
tattoo with a high-speed brush or diamond fraise wheel.
Both the epidermis and the dermis are removed, resulting in the destruction of the tattoo.
It sounds savage, but it's commonly used to remove other types of scarring and skin damage.
The worst way is to simply surgically remove the piece of skin containing the tattoo.
Now though, a fourth way might be on the horizon.
Alec Falkenham, a researcher in Halifax, Canada is working on a simple topical cream.
The cream is put onto the tattoo and reportedly causes no abrasions, blisters or inflammation,
mainly because it doesn't actually target the tattoo itself, but those macrophages!
The cream causes NEW macrophages to come in and consume the pigmented hangy-outy macrophages;
spiriting them away to the lymph nodes to be tossed out!
Over time, the tattoo is naturally eaten away.
It's not quite ready for public use, they're currently testing the cream on pigs ears.
In the end, the Mayo Clinic warns that tattoos are permanent.
YES lasers, dermabrasion, surgery and maybe this cream -- but overall, they're permanent!
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