Some tattoo inks in Europe contain banned pigments

A new study that analyzed 10 inks commonly used in Europe found that 9 of them were out of compliance with the European Union’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation ( Analyst 2024, DOI: 10.1039/D4AN00793J ). Under REACH, makers of tattoo inks and permanent makeup are required to list the products’ ingredients and reduce or eliminate compounds that could pose a risk to human or environmental health. For example, REACH recently banned two pigments common in blue and green inks, pigment green 7 and pigment blue 15:3, that the EU had also previously banned in hair color. Of the nine noncompliant inks, the researchers determined that five had minor discrepancies; these inks did not contain any banned pigments, but their labels didn’t list all their ingredients. But four inks contained the banned pigment green 7, and two contained a variant of pigment blue 15. The researchers were