Do tattoo inks cause cancer?

The European Union is considering restrictions on thousands of chemicals used in tattoo inks amid fears that they may cause certain cancers.

The Guardian reports that a proposal to introduce “tight limits” on the chemicals is “expected to be brought to a vote among EU member states by the middle of next year”.

The UK will not have a say on the matter as it will have left the EU by the time the vote goes ahead, the newspaper adds.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

There are currently no EU regulations on what a tattoo artist can inject into the skin, despite there being strict laws on which chemicals can be used to colour cosmetics or textiles, Politico reports.

However, last October the European Commission (EC) asked the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) to investigate the safety of tattoo ink.

In its report, the ECHA said that it was “well known that tattoo inks can and do contain substances of concern such as identified carcinogens and skin sensitisers”, but emphasised that no direct link has been made between tattoos and the development of cancer.

In experiments on animals, pigment particles have been found in lymph nodes and the liver, suggesting that traces of tattoo ink may transported around the body after being injected into the skin. But Evgenia Stoyanova, a socioeconomic analyst at ECHA, said that these studies were not carried out for long enough to be definitive, and that little is known about the chemicals’ carcenogenic properties.

In fact, there have not been any major studies testing for a potential link between tattoo inks and cancer - “but that doesn’t mean that they are not occurring”, said the ECHA’s Mark Blainey.

And while the jury is still out, the organisation has recommended that more than 4,000 chemicals commonly found in ink be strictly regulated.

The proposal will be put forward later this year by the agency’s scientific committees to the EC, which has three months to decide whether to adopt it, reports industry news site Chemical Watch.

However, rolling out such regulations could prove challenging. Politico has revealed that some tattoo parlours purchase inks from major chemical manufacturers despite those companies advising against their use for body art.

In 2016, the EC published a document containing recommendations for regulation of dozens of chemicals found in tattoo ink, advice that was ignored by EU nations.

Earlier this year, a Swedish study found that 12 of 34 tattoo inks used in the Scandinavian country still contained forbidden substances or high levels of contaminants.

Pointing to such flouting of existing rules, Jorgen Serup, chair of the European Society of Tattoo and Pigment Research, has argued that the ECHA’s ambitious proposals would “never, ever” be possible.