Albite the concept of body art is embedded with human culture for centuries, its popularity has taken it into the mainstream. The most popular form of revamping the body include body painting, tattooing, body marking, body piercing, hair micropigmentation among others. While most people consider body art for aesthetic purpose or individuality, many consider it for therapeutic, spiritual, acting/entertainment, or symbolic reasons.

Tools and Materials

A variety of tools are used for body art or its beautification. These include painting tools like brushes, dabbing tools like dabbers, tattooing tools like tattoo guns, scalp micropigmentation tools like pigmenting pen, body piercing tools like needles, etc.

Materials that are used for body arts mainly include tattoo inks, dyes, drawing inks, low-grade classes of inks, and a variety of cleaning agents. The extracts of Henna, a natural plant, are chiefly used for temporary beautification of hands and legs. Apart from plant extracts, ochre, the pigments used for tattooing may include antimony, cobalt-nickel, beryllium, lead, arsenic, etc. Among the additives used for painting include binding agents, surfactants, fillers, perfume, preservatives, and more.

Techniques

When it comes to the techniques used for body art that varies based on the type of body art. For body painting, body marking and tattooing, the artist uses the skin surface as the canvas and accordingly sketches the outline or layout of the design. Then dyes or pigments are applied by using varieties of brushes for body painting or marking, however, tattoo inks are deposited by means of tattoo guns and needles.

Given that tattoo art is for permanent purposes, a tattoo gun is used to introduce the pigments in the lower surface of the skin also known as the dermis layer. Similarly, dabbing is done using foam or a sponge for transferring a design onto the skin surface. Sometimes computerized design papers with permissible ink are transferred onto the body surface. The hair micropigmentation technique involves applying micro-pigments with SMP pens for replicating natural hair follicles onto the areas of the scalp that experiences thinning hair. Also, by the interlocking of natural-looking hair strands (synthetic fiber), a variety of hairstyling is done aka braiding.

Health Hazard

It is, however, intimidating that often body art results in various health hazards. Unfortunately, this happens due to sheer carelessness to practice health and hygiene which leads to contamination of the blood. Use of poor quality pigments, improper sterilization of tools/ instruments, and lack of best practices affect millions of body art enthusiasts’ from varied skin infections.

While the use of tattoo inks especially red, yellow, green, and blue dyes can pose severe skin allergies, the use of impure or contaminated inks and instruments can lead to skin infections like granulomatous reactions, eczematous hypersensitivity reactions, inflammatory reactions, photo-aggravated reactions apart from skin scar. Similarly, contamination of blood may cause blood-borne diseases like hepatitis B, HIV/Aids, hepatitis C, or even HIV/AIDS.

Prevention

The tattoo and piercing studios need to follow industry-standard health and hygiene practices to ensure the prevention of such health hazards. Some of these practices are listed below:

• Body art practitioners or tattooists should be well-versed in skin penetration procedures and must be license holders from local councils.

• The floor surface of the setting should be cleaned with disinfecting compounds and alcohol.

• Proper ventilation and sufficient lighting is a must.

• Basins for handwashing should supply clean, warm, sterilized water.

• Chairs, benches, tables used in the procedure room should be washed with non-toxic detergent and warm water and should be mopped with clean single-use clothes.

• All artists must wear disposal globes and those must be discarded after a single-use.

• The setting should have an automatic hand dryer and towels should be single-use.

• All instruments and tools used for tattooing or piercing must be sterilized by an autoclave machine.

• Only high-quality and industry-standard pigments should be used.

• Inks that are taken out of the container for inking purposes, the remaining part (if any) must not be poured back.

• The use of masks for artists should be compulsory.

• The use of waste disposal bins is also a must.