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Glad they only looked for Titanium Dioxide, as present in everything and anything except for a lot of the more common tattoo inks. Titanium Dioxide is effective

Glad they only looked for Titanium Dioxide, as present in everything and anything except for a lot of the more common tattoo inks. Titanium Dioxide is effectively 'white paint' and mixed in with ink as well as to do highlights in white. A lot of tattoo ink is 'burnt animal bones' and mostly harmless. However, a surprisingly large amount of people in the trade are vegan and therefore only use the 'vegan friendly' ink. So that means nickel shoved into the skin instead of dead animal ash. Colours, particularly bright colours, do need heavy metals such as cadmium for yellow, cobalt for blue and, depending on who is doing the fearmongering, lead, arsenic, everything up to depleted uranium. One might imagine that in this age where we have brightly coloured plastics made from petroleum products and friendly to everything from kids to dishwashers that it would be possible to get vegan friendly ink that was not made from toxic heavy metals. But it is not like that at all, to get good colours you do need lots of heavy metals. Tattoos are far from permanent, yellows will fade to be barely visible within five years even if looked after with sun cream and covered 99% of the time. I would be very interested to see how these inks make it from the skin and on towards the liver over time. I know some people say they are allergic to Titanium Dioxide but that has to be one of the more inert of the inks, what happens to the lead is more interesting. There could be a flip side though. Some people don't get enough zinc. So what if you could have a 'slow release mechanism' tattoo that gave you the zinc the doctor said you needed?

dizzystar 8y ago
We aren't made of polymers. Chemicals that don't separate from the plastic doesn't mean the chemicals used to make and color plastic are safe to stick directly into your body.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  Re. plastics specifically, the synthesis of these almost universally uses compounds of at least some toxicity. It's not easy to set up, control and maintain a reactor such that you get a very clean product containing very little of the original compounds. For durability, that doesn't really matter. But when you don't want plastics to contaminate things, then you really need high quality plastics. That's why e.g. kids toys and most of the plastic things you touch or put your food in/on are made from the cheapest plastics someone was able to make (because we're cheap fucks), while industrial piping, fittings etc. (which are quite common in many industries, because many substances are incompatible with steel piping, and stainless steel piping is even more expensive, and still incompatible with many substances) are still largely made in first-world countries and cost approx 2-10 times more per kg than cheap plastics. The former has all sorts of chemical dirt in it, while the latter only requires a few purging passes at most to not contaminate your product.

dizzystar 8y ago

We aren't made of polymers. Chemicals that don't separate from the plastic doesn't mean the chemicals used to make and color plastic are safe to stick directly into your body.

blattimwind 8y ago
Re. plastics specifically, the synthesis of these almost universally uses compounds of at least some toxicity. It's not easy to set up, control and maintain a reactor such that you get a very clean product containing very little of the original compounds. For durability, that doesn't really matter. But when you don't want plastics to contaminate things, then you really need high quality plastics. That's why e.g. kids toys and most of the plastic things you touch or put your food in/on are made from the cheapest plastics someone was able to make (because we're cheap fucks), while industrial piping, fittings etc. (which are quite common in many industries, because many substances are incompatible with steel piping, and stainless steel piping is even more expensive, and still incompatible with many substances) are still largely made in first-world countries and cost approx 2-10 times more per kg than cheap plastics. The former has all sorts of chemical dirt in it, while the latter only requires a few purging passes at most to not contaminate your product.