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Possible association between tattoos and lymphoma

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Re: Possible association between tattoos and lymphoma

#131

Post by HideousKojima »

pyuser583 wrote: post #107
gumby wrote: post #64

I’m not surprised — tattoo inks are not regulated and the colors are often formed with toxic compounds (e.g. copper). Then the needle avoids the protective barrier provided by the skin. Ironically, while working on a drug program that involved intradermal injection, we needed to tattoo the injection site so we could find it later. The FDA was very demanding that both the procedure and more importantly to them the dye…

The best X-Files episode, "Never Again" from Season 4, is about toxic chemicals in tattoos.

>The best X-Files episode

I believe you meant "Folie a Deux"?

Re: Possible association between tattoos and lymphoma

#132

Post by gumby »

stevenwoo wrote: post #89
gumby wrote: post #64

I’m not surprised — tattoo inks are not regulated and the colors are often formed with toxic compounds (e.g. copper). Then the needle avoids the protective barrier provided by the skin. Ironically, while working on a drug program that involved intradermal injection, we needed to tattoo the injection site so we could find it later. The FDA was very demanding that both the procedure and more importantly to them the dye…

Can you reveal what was safe to use as a tattoo ink?

We ended up using India ink, which (according to the encyclopedia of ink* ) is mainly soot.

We were able to isolate it in the HPLC and through some histopath experiments show that it didn’t have any negative local effect between (IIRC) seven and 60 days. Why those times? Protocol was to tattoo on day 0, wait a week for the site to recover, then inject our experimental material on day 7, sacrificing subject animals at D14 (one week), 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, and 56 days.

I don’t think lamp black is really a good idea, but was adequate for our purposes. We didn’t have to do any kind of long term study, just demonstrate that it would not interfere with our work in guinea pigs.

* I actually went to a specialist art store and the owner did indeed go to the back of the store and pull out one of the volumes of a multi-volume work on inks and pigments! I don’t know if it was actually named “The Encyclopedia of Ink”, though I do remember that that’s how he referred to it. He just photocopied the relevant page for me, most of which was the entry for India ink.

Re: Possible association between tattoos and lymphoma

#133

Post by hattmall »

zx8080 wrote: post #121
gumby wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress only authorizes executive branch agencies to have responsibility for certain things, and tattoos are not within scope, not being a medical treatment of any sort. BTW FDA was explicitly barred by a corrupt law* from regulating anything "natural" (a poorly defined criterion) so the same happens with all those things you see in Whole Foods: FDA can warn you of certain dangers from their web site but that's it.…

Does it take only one senator to pass any law?

Yes pretty much, unless there is another senator that's actively opposing it. But lots of tiny laws with big implications get stuck on to spending bills and get passed with no opposition.

For example, the corruption at the Atlanta airport is mind boggling. The airport is actually owned and run by the city and when the corruption becomes over bearing to the point that it had serious impacts, like the semi-recent power outage, the state legislature threatens to take over operations to keep the city in check.

So one of the senators from GA just recently slipped a line into a spending bill that would make it nearly impossible for the state to do so.

Re: Possible association between tattoos and lymphoma

#134

Post by tempestn »

esperent wrote: post #129
tempestn wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though not those related to people's choice to get tattoos.

Tattoos are so common these days that I'm not sure you can say much about a person just because they have tattoos.

Any given person, for sure. In aggregate though I bet you'd find correlations.

Re: Possible association between tattoos and lymphoma

#135

Post by weakfish »

mythrwy wrote: post #104
plasma_beam wrote: post #2

If the correlation is proven true then that’s obviously terrible, but I’m in my mid 40s now, tattoo-less, and one of my biggest regrets is not getting a couple tattoos when I was younger. I feel like doing it now looks like a midlife crisis type thing. I always wanted one of those Thai tattoos where they manually tap tap tap the design into your skin with a mallet.

Surprised at the number of people saying "just do it"! For what it's worth I would never ink my body. Ever. I would sleep in the disposal hole of a porta potty first, that is how strongly I feel about it. I have nothing against tattoos in general, many of my close friends have them. But I would never ever personally get one and can't imagine even considering it.

Why is that? Out of curiosity

Re: Possible association between tattoos and lymphoma

#136

Post by DoreenMichele »

“We have identified people diagnosed with lymphoma via population registers. These individuals were then matched with a control group of the same sex and age, but without lymphoma. The study participants answered a questionnaire about lifestyle factors to determine whether they were tattooed or not”

Not at all what I expected. Color me impressed with the methodology.

Re: Possible association between tattoos and lymphoma

#137

Post by tyre »

tempestn wrote: post #134
esperent wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tattoos are so common these days that I'm not sure you can say much about a person just because they have tattoos.

Any given person, for sure. In aggregate though I bet you'd find correlations.

they are statistically cooler

Re: Possible association between tattoos and lymphoma

#138

Post by cperciva »

h05sz487b wrote: post #94
stevenwoo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you reveal what was safe to use as a tattoo ink?

Please don‘t tattoo your guinea pig.

How things have changed. 30 years ago we said "please get your pets tattooed" because ear tattoos were how veterinarians reunited lost animals with their humans. Now we use RFID tags and tattooing is frowned upon.

Re: Possible association between tattoos and lymphoma

#140

Post by gumby »

h05sz487b wrote: post #94
stevenwoo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you reveal what was safe to use as a tattoo ink?

Please don‘t tattoo your guinea pig.

Why not? We tattoo all sorts of food animals, which is what they were originally bred for (and I can confirm from experience that they are yummy — they are street food in the Andes).

Not that I have eaten the ones bred for medical research. But a fun side point: we did drug program for which the FDA insisted that preclinical studies be done in mini pigs (similar to human skin) though our research program had been in guinea pigs. The Göttingen mini pigs, like many experimental program animals, are carefully inbred so you can get a group that are genetically quite similar. We had to do the study in Toronto because the labs in California claimed they were being outbid by certain restaurants who wanted pork short ribs.

I was (and remain) convinced that this was some kind of racist joke (among other things these kinds of animals are quite expensive), but multiple people swore it was true.

So maybe you have eaten an animal intended for scientific research.

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