Welcome to TattoFont.org

Lets start off with a section about tattoo health. Chances are you've made your way to our site because you're ready for a tattoo. The majority of our site is dedicated to helping you find the right body art. While we hope our site will be a great resource for our soon to be painted friends, it would be unfair not to mention the risks. Don't let this stuff scare you. As many as one in four people have a tattoo. With odds like that, chances of serious health problems must be slim. We'll get a bit heavy into the risks here just to cover the bases.

What is the number one health risk? Well, many will disagree but from our viewpoint its emotional distress. Imagine you got a little out of it and did something really stupid. Recovering from your hangover you wake up in a cell with brutus who has just noticed your momma's boy tat. Ok so thats a bit extreme. It is very common for people to carry around emotional baggage stemming from a bad decision. A tattoo is the worst case here because you get to keep the little remider with you all the time. Sure gang signs and girlfriends names sound cool at the time. If you have to get drunk to build up the courage to go through with it, you're about to make a big mistake.

This brings us to tattoo removal. Most people see technology as a magical miricle that can fix anything. They hear about laser tattoo removal and just think its not permanent because there's a fancy new removal procedure. Nothing could be further from the truth. A tattoo is created by injecting drops of ink just below the outer layer of skin. Ideally this ink has tiny particles just big enough that they won't be absorbed into the skin cells. As skin cells die they are replaced by new ones. The ink stays because it floats between the cells. Laser removal involves blasting affected areas with energy to break up the ink particles. The broken down ink is absorbed into the bloodstream.

Where do the chemicals that were used to make the ink end up? How about your liver and kidneys. Heavy metals used to color inks are really bad for your body. In a dormant state as they float between the skin cells they can be harmless. Floating around in your blood is another story. The laser also kills skin cells while its burning up the ink. Burnt skin can lead to a scar. We may have made this sound bad, but its not all bad. Most people's liver can handle a bit of tattoo ink, and scarring is usually minor. The darker the ink the easier laser removal works. This stems from something you probably learned in a grade school science class. Dark colors absorb more energy than light colors. Thus, yellow inks take several more treatments for the laser to break up enough of the ink for the tattoo to disperse. There is one more drawback to laser removal. Its expensive! Figure its going to cost you at least 10 to 100 times as much to get rid of the tattoo as the tattoo cost you in the first place.

Aside from the popular laser removal process, there are other ways to get rid of a tattoo. Expect to end up with a scar regardless of the procedure you choose. Dermabrasion is where they freeze the skin and then litterally sand off the tattoo. Its quick and mostly painless due to the fact that the skin is frozen first, but it leaves a nasty scar. What would you expect after sanding off your skin? You could also undertake surgical removal. This means cutting away the tattoo and sewing the skin back together. In this day in age, you probably won't encounter this unless a special situation arises. Performing surgery is much more expensive and risky than laser removal or dermabraision.

Before you even begin to concider choosing an artist you should first make sure they have (and use) an Autoclave. An autoclave is a heat sterilization machine. They should use it on all nondisposable equipment after every use. The biggest risks you take while during the process of getting a tattoo are exposure to infection, blood born disease, and reactions. If you are allergic to latex or you don't know make sure before the artist starts. Swelling from an allergic reaction can ruin what would otherwise be a beautiful piece of work. Latex allergies are the most common followed by allergies to the ink. There are hypoallergenic inks available in most colors. (red is the exception) A good tattoo shop may be willing to test a drop of ink in an out of sight place to check for allergies before you commit to using that color. Red is commonly the worst culprit so you may want to concider a design that doesn't use the color red. The risk of disease is fairly slight as long as you use a shop that does a good job of sterilization. Unfortunatly it is common for this not to be the case. By getting a tattoo from a sub par shop you run the risk of hepatitis, HIV, and other nasties. There are even cases of serious antibiotic-resistant skin infections linked to unlicensed tattoo artists.

Once you've got the tattoo and the sky didn't fall, it isn't over just yet. There are some ongoing risks that came along with the cute little heart on your butt. After getting a tattoo you may find that the affected area has become sensetive to sun light. You won't be able to donate blood for some time after the procedure. The risk that you might have caught some as to yet undetected bug is too much to let you spread it to others. If you find yourself in a serious medical situation, you may find the doctors unwilling to do an MRI on you. Magnetic Resinance Imagery could save your life, but with tiny particles of metal in your skin they may not be able to use it. This is much more severe with prison tattoos. Often prison tattoos are done with inks made from obscure sources that have alot of metal particles in them. Years later you may find your tattoo has faded. This isn't so much a risk as a dissapointment. If you choose the wrong part of your body to put the tattoo on you may fall victim to sagging or hair growth. That perfect portrait of bill clinton may look like ronald regan after 20 years.