C&EN: "Some tattoo inks in Europe contain banned pigments"

This news via C&EN's Krystal Vasquez: 

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).

Nine tattoo inks were found to be noncompliant with the European Union's Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals regulation.

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 unable to conclusively determine using their main method of analysis, Raman spectroscopy, whether the variant was the banned pigment blue 15:3.

Pretty interesting analysis - read the whole thing. 

I guess I don't really understand why there is an expectation (even in Europe) that tattoo inks would follow EU chemical regulations. (Who enforces REACH in EU countries, anyway?) Do people looking for tattoos ask about this? Is there a German Tattoo Safety Agency?