Ink Inc.: Should tattoos be regulated?

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Ink Inc.: Should tattoos be regulated?
November 23, 2010
By GRETCHEN METZ
Daily Times

Some local tattoo salon operators say they have had enough.

Their concern is about “scratchers” or “kitchen magicians” — slang for tattoo artists who work out of their home, not a salon. They are poaching business from established tattoo salons and giving the industry a black eye, the operators claim.

Tattoo salon operators blame the lack of state or local regulations for allowing more scratchers to set up shop in their kitchens, their campers or their vans.

Currently, the only state regulation regarding tattooing makes it illegal to tattoo a minor without parental consent.

With the assault on their bottom line growing, tattoo salon operators — ironically part of the very industry that flaunts its rebel image — are now the ones looking for help from the government.

“They give us a bad rap,” said Tracy Davis, a piercer at Underworld Tattoo in Gap, about scratchers who have not apprenticed and who take their tattooing and piercing business on the road to work in other people’s homes amid pets, children, smokers and other sources of infection.

Last week Davis called together about a half dozen tattoo salon operators in Chester and Lancaster counties to discuss the issue.

Riley Calnell, owner of Addictive Expression in Kinzers, said the general public does not understand how dangerous an untrained tattooer and homemade equipment can be.

Some tattoo artists sterilize their equipment by boiling it, a basically useless effort to destroy bacteria, she said.

“Boiling water cooks pasta, that’s it,” Calnell said.
Sterilizing should be done to professional standards using hospital-grade sterilizing equipment, Davis added.

Both Davis and Calnell said they have been professionally trained, served apprenticeships and attend continuing education courses offered by the industry.

Customers who get infections from a tattoo performed in unsanitary conditions “come to us,” Davis said. “And we’re upset that they bring (the botched tattoos) to our shop, it reflects on us as professionals.”

Davis, who has pictures from the Internet of homemade tattoo devices fashioned from radio-controlled cars, tape deck motors and vibrators, said devices like those are held together with duct tape or hot glue. None of those devices can be sterilized.

“People are under the impression that if you can draw on paper, you tattoo. It doesn’t work like that,” Davis said. “We want to be regulated.”

John Black, owner of Black Ink Studio in Valley, said he sees customers every day looking for help from him after they get an infection from an untrained tattooer. Some, he said, he won’t touch.

“Besides taking money out or our pockets, they spread infections,” said Black, who like the others would like to see tattooing and piercing regulations in place and enforced.

Sue Crecco closed her tattoo salon in Coatesville because there was no local ordinance that required inspections and the number of scratchers was growing by the day.

“The home tattooers were killing me,” said Crecco, of western Chester County. “I couldn’t keep open.”

Now Crecco operates Studio Sue in Lancaster City, a municipality that has tattoo salon regulations and enforcement.

Salon operators who push for regulations, inspections and enforcement get no argument from Alex Perkins, a tattooer who runs his business from his home in Oxford.

Perkins is what salon owners refer to as a scratcher — he even wears a T-shirt with the word “scratcher” across the front as a joke.

“I’d like them to come in and inspect,” said Perkins, adding that his whole kitchen has been turned over to tattooing. “Some scratchers do it the wrong way. I’d be more than happy for an inspector to come through here.”

Perkins apprenticed starting in 2003 and “didn’t pick up a needle for two years.” He has been doing his own work since 2007. He said the needles he uses are new and that he uses professional sterilization equipment just like the tattoo salons do. His tattoo equipment is kept in a glass cabinet.

Just because he operates out of his home does not mean that he is untrained or his methods unsafe, he said.

“I do five or six people a week,” Perkins said, noting that no customer has picked up a skin disease while at his home-based shop. As for his work, Perkins said he was an art student.

“It doesn’t matter what you have,” Perkins said regarding equipment. “It’s about the person doing the tattooing.”

Kim Wissler, health officer for Lancaster City, was motivated to draw up regulations for tattoo businesses in the city after her teenage daughter came home with one.

“I wrote the ordinance because I thought there was a need,” said Wissler, a city health officer for 10 years. “It was introduced on Feb. 2, 2007 and adopted later that month.”

Wissler said tattoo shop operators and others had an opportunity to voice concerns to council. Not only did no one voice objections, members of the community and salon owners themselves spoke out in favor of licensing and inspections, she said.

o get a license in Lancaster, tattoo operators and staff need to undergo blood-borne pathogen training, have first aid training and a first aid kit in the shop, and pass a shop inspection.

When someone comes forward with a complaint, Wissler goes to the tattoo operator. If warranted, a cease and desist order is filed. Wissler said she wrote out two cease and desist orders this past summer.

Cities such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg have tattoo ordinances. Wissler said some other smaller cities in Pennsylvania are in the process of adopting tattooing ordinances modeled after the one in Lancaster City.

Some states, like Missouri, have laws in place to regulate tattoo operators.

Vanessa Beauchamp, executive director of the Office of Tattooing, Body Piercing & Branding in Jefferson City, Mo., said regulations for tattooing have been on the books since 2003.

Missouri passed the measure because tattoo salon operators “came to the legislature and worked with the legislators” to get the regulations enacted, Beauchamp said in a phone interview.

The inspections are done at no cost to the taxpayer, Beauchamp pointed out, because licensing fees paid by tattoo salon operators fund the agency.

State Sen. Andy Dinniman believes there are two reasons why Pennsylvania has not passed a law to regulate tattoo business operators despite many measures being introduced over the last few years.

While there is no group that opposes tattoo regulations, there is also no organized advocacy group, said Dinniman, D-19th, of West Whiteland, who represents central and eastern Chester County.

“There are hundreds and hundreds of bills (before the Legislature),” Dinniman said. “To get to the top of the pile, you need a group who pushes for it.”

The other reason, Dinniman said, is that the state’s Legislature is reluctant to interfere with decisions residents make regarding their bodies, such as tattooing.

Dinniman does not give much weight to the second argument, since there are state regulations about tanning salons and restaurants in place. Both are businesses residents choose to use and, because of licensing and inspections, expect to leave the process without going to the hospital.

Dinniman thinks that eventually there will be measures passed in Pennsylvania that are similar to the Missouri model as more residents ask their legislators for protection.