Tattoos and piercings are the object for a long time of controversies at the healthcare professionals.

Tattoos and pierceurs

The sensual or elegant deliberate vagueness of a profession for some, agitators for the others, the tattoos and the piercings know an increasing success and are practised up to several hundreds of thousand times a year. Artists in the soul, the specialists of the physical marking have this day no recognized professional status, and their acts Are framed(supervised) by no sanitary rule deserving of this name Ö A problem which persists and continues to worry both the authorities of health, the tattooers / pierceurs, and their clientele itself.

So old as the humanity, the physical markings make and will always make followers. If the fashion passes, them stay to join determinedly the air(sight) of Time(Weather). That it is about tattoos or about piercings, these wounds of beauty join the flesh, with all that it implies of risks for the health. Nevertheless, proclaim itself tattooers / pierceurs live within the reach of all because no professional status and no rule on the sanitary plan(shot) were still born. The point on a practice evil of legitimacy.

Practices at risk

Tattoos and piercings are the object for a long time of controversies at the healthcare professionals. And for cause! Indeed, these acts can be dangerous for the health. The potential risk of local bacterial transmission (staphylococcus, streptococci, pyocyaniques) is clearly establishes. Very fortunately, these infections are For the greater part mild, except in rare cases where the tattoo give place to generalized blood-poisoning and endocardites (inflammation of the cardiac muscle). Without forgetting the viral infections (HIV, VHC and VHB), for lack of asepsis or still by transmission crossed between the professional and his customer. If a single case of transmission of the hepatitis C was recently reported following a piercing of the ear, the risk was judged Piercing in the year preceding the gift(donation). In the case of the tattoo, the sanitary risk also would come from the composition of ink, among which the quality and the origin are subjected to no standard.

It will moreover have been necessary to wait for a Czech description stating the hospitalization for osseous infection further to the contagion by a mushroom (Acremonium fungi) so that the French Agency of Sanitary Safety(Security) of the Products of Health.

Administrative imbroglio

This affair(business) intervened some days after the French legislation recognized for the first time the products of tattoo by inserting their definition and capacities(measures) foreseen(planned) in their use in the public health code. But always nothing as regards the professional status of these artists (as they define themselves Themselves), as well as on the sanitary rule of these physical practices. Because if the doctors and the other professionals of health wait for several years for the clear and precise sanitary directives, the professionals of the tattoo and the piercing themselves are also very aware(conscious) of risks and of the necessity of resorting to more safe(surer) practices to their clientele. According to an inquiry of sanitary safety(security) led there Inspectors of the public health, there would still be grave gaps of hygiene at certain practitioners. Most of them are nevertheless plaintiffs(applicants) of more information in sanitary precautions. In front of the democratization of the tattoo and of the reproduction of shops, the National Labor union(Syndicate) of the Artists Tattooers moreover decided to take itself things in hand already by creating several years ago Manuel(Text book) Collaboration with surgeons, doctors and dermatologists. To note that a guide of the good practices of piercings had also been edited supervised by the Welfare services of the Hospitals of Paris.

A rule would be however in preparation and should come into effect at the end of 2005. Only fly in the ointment: these sanitary directives of the Head office of the Health would have been elaborated without the consultation of the tattooers / pierceurs. ” Nobody of us was urged to participate in the discussions under pretext that our profession is not legally recognized. It would nevertheless have been justifiable, even indispensable to participate in To guarantee it their harmlessness ” explains Sandra Thouvenot, pierceuse and member(limb) of the National Labor union(Syndicate) of the Artists Tattooers. If these professionals think of having their word to be said, it is because the next working rules in which they had access leave them more than sceptics on the future of the profession. Some of these directives will for example oblige every tattooer to pursue a paramedical formation(training) on the rules of asepsis, to follow Several different rooms between every act, total use of sterile material(equipment) including sprays, pissettes, bottles of alcohol and gloves of examination). ” The list which we have is not exhaustive and we have no access right to the text. The major problem of these directives is that they impose an expensive functioning, maladjusted persons and will have the effect only the closure(lock) of the small shops, surcharges her(it), in brief, a total. If these rules worry the tattooers, they should nevertheless reassure the users.

Number of these artists already takes optimal precautions of hygiene in their lounge(show) and do not more ask than to return more in connection with professionals of health to realize guides of good practices. At the same time, the authorities of health try to frame(supervise) in a watchful way these physical acts in the most reassuring possible frame(executive). And we can only be delighted at it!