Ephemeral is developing tattoo ink designed to disappear after a year

Long long ago I was a tattoo artist. With very careful needle adjustments, color choices, and a steady hand, this is already possible with conventional inks. Simple example: white ink is titanium oxide, basically sunscreen, and breaks down rapidly with exposure to UV.<p>But you are still gonna have scarring and roughening. If you&#x27;re gonna get ink, be prepared to have it for life.<p>Also, testing on pigs? Like, live pigs? I&#x27;d pay money to see that. :)

You would probably still want to be selective about which tattoos you get and where they are placed. Each session can create scar tissue which could be noticeable even if the ink fades completely, and it can be harder to tattoo over scar tissue as well.<p>Scarring isn&#x27;t guaranteed, and to a large extent depends on the artist knowing what they&#x27;re doing, but still something to consider.

I&#x27;m torn. On one hand, this invention will keep a lot of people from making the very common mistake of getting ink they don&#x27;t like and can&#x27;t remove.<p>On the other hand, a beautiful part of this art form is that it is basically permanent. To my mind, a tattoo loses a lot of its value of it&#x27;s only temporary.

If they really have a solution that is safe and they prove it, they will really disrupt the tattoo market. Losing the fear with a solution like this one will make people want more tattoos for sure !

One interesting use for this would be to get a tattoo you think you want to be permanent, and then when it fades, decide if you liked it enough to get it redone with permanent ink.

Now I&#x27;m picturing National Security Letter canary tattoos for technical activists.

I am very skeptical about this, because when tattoo ink fades, it accumulates inside the lymphatic system, it is not flushed out of the body.<p>Black ink, for example, colors the lymph nodes within the area of the tatoo completely black. Black ink is made out of soot which often contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a carzinogen.<p>So if they say their product is &quot;designed to break down after a year&quot; and &quot;By using smaller molecules, we’ve encapsulated them inside this spherical structure that’s big enough that your immune system doesn’t take it away. But when you remove it, it essentially eats away one of the components and the dye molecules are flushed out&quot;, i really wonder if this could quickly develop into a real health problem.<p>Smaller molecules really sound like nano particles and since tattoo dye is not flushed out of your body, i tend to assume those nano particles will accumulate inside the lymphatic system. And what about that &quot;spherical structure&quot; stuff, what is it made of? And that &quot;removal solution&quot; they talk about on their website, the symbol next to it looks like its also tattoed into the skin.

If this really works, getting a tattoo will be no more edgy than getting your hair dyed. Tattoos will rapidly fall out of fashion.

$50-100 for an average sized tattoo. So that&#x27;s the price before you even pay the artist to do the work. Quite a big premium. I&#x27;d say the &#x27;average&#x27; sized tattoo (something large on your bicep but not fully covering it or wrapping around it) is probably $300 and most of that cost is labour. Add the price of this expensive ink and you&#x27;re paying $350-400 - for something that&#x27;s going to disappear after a year.

About ten years ago, I remember an article about a special tattoo ink that was encased in laser-sensitive capsules. When irradiated, the capsules burst and the ink was absorbed virtually completely. The thing that outraged me was that they were having a hard time selling it, as tattoo &quot;artists&quot; were refusing to have their &quot;creations&quot; be removed at the user&#x27;s behest. Most artists were even refusing to tell their customers that removable ink was an option.<p>Since criminals don&#x27;t have resumes, tattoos used to be their signaling mechanisms. As suburban kids began to make that signalling useless, a few years ago I read that criminals had moved on to painful eyelid tattoos. A quick Google search shows that didn&#x27;t slow the posers down very much. I wonder how criminals signal how badass they are these days?

It would be really helpful to tattoo the current year on my arm each NYE!

The only thing stopping me from getting an arm sleeve is knowing it will be there forever, and during future times when I can&#x27;t have one.<p>Though if it lasts 12 months, by month 8 will I have a half-faded looking thing that I either have to retouch, or deal with until it fades completely?

I guess the market is there but I bet there are better applications than tattooing. Disappearing ink probably isn&#x27;t worth the discomfort for many tattoos. But hey, tattoo ink isn&#x27;t exactly the most innovative space so it&#x27;s cool to see a fresh idea

It has been fun to watch this previously considered so dangerous become so mainstream. Something like this and you&#x27;ll have tween girls having tattoo parties.

It would be interesting to see all the failed non-disappearing tattoo prototypes.

This sucks for everyone with the old permanent model

Oh good, <i>even more</i> barbed wire biceps, carp sleeves, black fore-arm stars, &quot;tribal&quot; patterns on white dudes, spiderwebs, hummingbirds, infinity symbols, and other ways for people to show how eager they are to express their &quot;individuality&quot;!<p>Edit: Down-vote me if I offend your tattooed rebellious self-image, it&#x27;s fine, but there&#x27;s a real point to be made. This technology will lead to a lot more tattoos, and a lot more homogeneity and poor designs. I know people with tattoos that most people would actually call legitimate &quot;art&quot;, and I know some of them wouldn&#x27;t be particularly thrilled by the further &quot;watering down&quot; of what they consider an important part of their identity.