It is still quite unknown how the impurities contained in the color mixtures that are injected into the skin, the tattoos, react when they leak into the body of the tattooed person.
A recent study provides the first evidence that pigments, both organic and inorganic, seep into the body in the form of micro and nanoparticles until they reach the lymph nodes, also carrying substances whose effects are ignored with them.
Lymph nodes
The study , published in the journal Scientific Report by researchers from the European Synchrotron of Grenoble (ESRF), in France, reveals that the filtration of nanoparticles, in addition to staining the lymph nodes, carries impurities and toxic elements through the body.
As Bernhard Hesse , lead author of the study, explains:
We already knew that tattoo pigments travel to the lymph nodes because we saw how they stain the color of the tattoo, what we did not know is that they do so at a nano size. This implies that they may not have the same behavior as the particles at the micro level, so we still do not know how these nanoparticles of the pigments react.
Most tattoo inks contain organic pigments, along with preservatives and contaminants such as nickel, chromium, manganese and cobalt, and no one checks the chemical composition of the inks .