Equipment Used for Cosmetic and Medical Tattooing

This chapter reviews our present knowledge about equipment used for cosmetic (decorative) and medical tattooing and its function with respect to installation of tattoo ink into the skin. In the following text, the word "tattooing" refers to body tattooing, permanent makeup (PMU), microblading, and medical micropigmentation. The major consumer risks related to unsafe tattoo and PMU equipment are reconsidered. Such health risks mainly include the danger of non-sterile needles or needle cartridges, cross contamination of equipment and lack of biocompatibility. Even though state-of-the-art tattoo equipment will support the tattooist to reduce such health risks, also today unsafe equipment still might affect consumer health due to malpractice advertising and fraudulent CE certificates by questionable manufacturers and suppliers not being transparent to parlors and artists. For artists, it is therefore of growing importance to understand how to distinguish well-made safe tattoo equipment from fraudulent unsafe products.