Question:
While listening to the radio, Howard Stern show, a caller claimed he removed
and old tattoo by packing it in salt. Using a bandage and covering it with
massive amounts of salt lifted his tattoo off. Now I know salt would draw out
any moisture but would it really pull all the ink along with it??
Answer:
- Maybe it was a temporary tattoo
No, at least not in a healed tattoo. The ink sits in and around
macropages (white blood cells), inside the healed, intact skin.
Salt applied to the skin will draw out water because of the different
concentrations of salt inside the skin cells vs. on the skin, but
anything else will be held back by the skin. Maybe a few electrolytes
would come out too.
But if salt was able to draw ink particles out, I'd bet it would draw
out lots more, like cell proteins and such, and I'd expect the cells
to die (which would happen if you left the salt on for long enough,
simply because the cells need water), and the whole skin to fall off.
That would be "lifting off the tattoo", in a way :-).
Maybe the caller was referring to a freshly made tattoo? I'd imagine
that, while the skin still has all the tiny holes in it, salt might
draw the ink out along with the water, just like excessive bleeding
will "wash" the ink out.
- If you used the salt like sandpaper and removed enough skin sooner or later the
tattoo would also disappear.
- Since i posted my first article asking about Tat removal i've received many
sugestions ... Someone told me that if i use some alpha-hydroxy acids in
combination with Tretinoin the process to remove the tat could be speded up
... Is it possible? Another one told me that i would need to know the typical
chemical structure of the dye, and find a (non-toxic) chemical that would
alter that structure, without affecting the skin ... And it, is possible ?
