Monday, May 9, 2011

Unregulated Tattoo Ink

Monday must be NPR's day of woe. After the autism piece, they ran a second piece about the dangers of unregulated ink used to tattoo humans. They dropped the amazing statistic that 30% of Americans have tattoos (really?) and then bemoaned the lack of government regulation of tattoo ink, and by implication regulation of the entire tattoo business, probably with an eye to shutting it down.
Now I don't hold with tattoos myself, I think they are dumb looking, and likely to cause infection, but if others want to tattoo them selves, it's none of my business, and none of the government's business.

2 comments:

Evan said...

I'm not surprised at the 30% mark. It's probably higher. Most people I know who are 30 and under have a tattoo of some sort. I wouldn't want one myself, but hey, whatever people want to do.

I know someone who is in her mid-30s, works at Hahvahd and just got her first tattoo a few months ago.

Dstarr said...

Hmm, Times change. Back when I was living on dorm, no guys had tattoos. That was quite a few years ago, long before co-ed dorms.