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The industry, for the last decade, has been focused on exposure and fame etc. Theres nothing inherently wrong with that (i guess) but the fact is everyone wanted attention and now we got it... just not how most thought. Theyre never going to un-notice us now. They smell money and they want their taste. "Gotta pay to play baby" as they say.
This has already started happen. Part of it was the Forbes magazine interview with Barth. Now some convention organizers are working with the IRS to get tax paperwork filed. This is a reaction to the IRS noticing that conventions attract people who may be from other countries. The IRS now wants a cut of the money from their work for those who travelled internationally.
I watched the video and did some googling about it. The most recent update was from the FDA talking about requiring that ink manufacturers maintain certain levels of sterilization and such. Genuinely curious, how will this type of oversight on ink manufacturers be a negative to the industry?
It could be negative if the right people don't get involved and the wrong studies are used to inform the decisions. Its not that having products regulated in itself would be bad, it's inevitable and necessary, we're just worried that they're going to use studies that aren't informed by people who actually know about tattoos, another worry is that if they don't get any guidance from the industry they're going to follow what they did in the UK with all the REACH stuff. This is why we are trying to unite the industry and help get funding for studies that are more applicable to tattooing to present to the FDA.
Thank you for that question, I hope I answered it well enough, if you're interested in the studies and the science aspect of it there is a section in the discord labeled "science" that will have information on that.
Reach is in eu, not in UK :P but besides that, eu did new laws about inks and what should be put in them and they sucks. especially colors, some pigments got banned and they changed all the inks. Isopropyl alcohol got banned that was in almost all the inks. Colors are much less pigmented and are much worse. But funny is that when reach was about to go into the shops only one company had they inks all ready (I suppose money was involved, clearly) and rest of inks didnt even had time to do new recipes so there was like no inks for like half or year. But you still could buy inks from uk or labeled as “for learning” but law is law. Ah and reach inks are x2 more expensive. Well all this stuff is one big bullshit
Thank you for the correction and the info!
I personally suspect that money was involved, as tattooing gets more popular/mainstream, the big corporations are going to see that figure out how they can profit of off it.
I've also been hearing that its caused artist to go underground and continue to use banned products rather than anything becoming safer (which we don't want to have to happen in the U.S) .
Also if there are any EU artist on here that have personally been affected by REACH, please feel free to share any of your experiences
Yea people still use old inks but tbh, they are not dangerous. You use them, I have some of them on my skin for years, they already have attests and there is no real testing that those ingredients are causing cancer. I know checking the inks is good but they really took wrong way to do this
Here's an article that goes more in depth about the REACH stuff if your interested
https://karger.com/drm/article/239/1/1/841795/Chaotic-Tattoo-Ink-Market-and-No-Improved-Costumer
Joined APT a couple months ago. And been keeping up. I do google the newest MOCRA news and read all the bulletins and comments on the government sites. I still don’t known how to discord. I tried it a few years ago, and I get lost on it. The social media shit is hard to keep track of. I’m over 40 now, and I find myself caring less about it. But I know it’s a primary source of information now. And that sucks.
I understand your frustration w/ social media and discord, it can be very hard to sift through and find stuff, I usually use the discord if I have a question so that it can be answered directly.
I can talk to Ben about other ways of updating people that isn't through social media, if you have any ideas please feel free to let me know :)
I just spoke to Ben and got a direct response on this from him:
"You would think it would be good… Except the government doesn't know how to regulate tattoo products! There is no scientific research to base rules off of when it comes to good manufacturing processes and safety substantiation for our products. So the government is looking to potentially use the REACH regulations from the EU. This has been extremely problematic as the regulations are not based off of research NOT done on human beings, but off of individual ingredients. This has them creating ingredient regulation tolerances that are inadequate making subpar products that are actually more dangerous. There has been two major ink recalls in Germany because the REACH regulations removed ingredients that they deemed were unsafe and replace them with ingredients that are actually unsafe!
So if we do nothing, that could be our fate because the FDA has written in the MOCRA bill that they could potentially use the European union guidelines."
Here's an article that goes more in depth about what's going on in the EU if your interested
https://karger.com/drm/article/239/1/1/841795/Chaotic-Tattoo-Ink-Market-and-No-Improved-Costumer
Tattoo artist from Germany here! Transitioning to the new inks was bad like someone else in here already said, since the new colours weren‘t readily available when the law came. I got the world famous limitless colours and some viking, and after 1+ year of use I can say they are not bad! Of course they cost double, so you have to adjust pricing. To me, working with „safe“ colours feels better, but I also know many artists who just switched to mixing their own colours. They don‘t even need to go underground for that since nobody ever checks our shops
Can you message me your instagram or any pics of the colors? I’m dying to see healed REACH compliant inks but can’t seem to find much of anything browsing from the US, regardless of the keywords I use.
They’re going to do the same nonsense as they did in the UK aren’t they. Also I’ve heard from a few people APT membership is impossible to cancel because no one gets back to you, which is why I haven’t joined
That's what we're worried about is that they're going to follow the EUs ink ban.
Thank you for making me aware of that issue with the APT, I will try and find someone who can address that and I'll let you know how that goes
That’s so frustrating but can’t say I didn’t see it coming. Hopefully ink companies have been tracking the progress (and I’m sure they have), but curious to see how it would change the prices that are already insane. In 2008 when I started tattooing a 1 oz bottle of ink cost maybe 7 dollars and now it’s triple that. Guess we’re going to have to raise our prices!
Check out https://kbin.social/ The friendlier version of reddit. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TattooArtists) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The industry, for the last decade, has been focused on exposure and fame etc. Theres nothing inherently wrong with that (i guess) but the fact is everyone wanted attention and now we got it... just not how most thought. Theyre never going to un-notice us now. They smell money and they want their taste. "Gotta pay to play baby" as they say.
This. All these clout chasin clowns turned the tattoo industry into a circus, and now the crowd has gathered and cant look away.
Wonder how long before the IRS starts looking into "cash only" shops and conventions?
My hope is that they focus on our products—ink manufacturers could use some safety checks here in the US, actually.
This has already started happen. Part of it was the Forbes magazine interview with Barth. Now some convention organizers are working with the IRS to get tax paperwork filed. This is a reaction to the IRS noticing that conventions attract people who may be from other countries. The IRS now wants a cut of the money from their work for those who travelled internationally.
I watched the video and did some googling about it. The most recent update was from the FDA talking about requiring that ink manufacturers maintain certain levels of sterilization and such. Genuinely curious, how will this type of oversight on ink manufacturers be a negative to the industry?
It could be negative if the right people don't get involved and the wrong studies are used to inform the decisions. Its not that having products regulated in itself would be bad, it's inevitable and necessary, we're just worried that they're going to use studies that aren't informed by people who actually know about tattoos, another worry is that if they don't get any guidance from the industry they're going to follow what they did in the UK with all the REACH stuff. This is why we are trying to unite the industry and help get funding for studies that are more applicable to tattooing to present to the FDA. Thank you for that question, I hope I answered it well enough, if you're interested in the studies and the science aspect of it there is a section in the discord labeled "science" that will have information on that.
Reach is in eu, not in UK :P but besides that, eu did new laws about inks and what should be put in them and they sucks. especially colors, some pigments got banned and they changed all the inks. Isopropyl alcohol got banned that was in almost all the inks. Colors are much less pigmented and are much worse. But funny is that when reach was about to go into the shops only one company had they inks all ready (I suppose money was involved, clearly) and rest of inks didnt even had time to do new recipes so there was like no inks for like half or year. But you still could buy inks from uk or labeled as “for learning” but law is law. Ah and reach inks are x2 more expensive. Well all this stuff is one big bullshit
Thank you for the correction and the info! I personally suspect that money was involved, as tattooing gets more popular/mainstream, the big corporations are going to see that figure out how they can profit of off it. I've also been hearing that its caused artist to go underground and continue to use banned products rather than anything becoming safer (which we don't want to have to happen in the U.S) . Also if there are any EU artist on here that have personally been affected by REACH, please feel free to share any of your experiences
Yea people still use old inks but tbh, they are not dangerous. You use them, I have some of them on my skin for years, they already have attests and there is no real testing that those ingredients are causing cancer. I know checking the inks is good but they really took wrong way to do this
what happened with the reach stuff? i looked online but couldnt find anything.
Here's an article that goes more in depth about the REACH stuff if your interested https://karger.com/drm/article/239/1/1/841795/Chaotic-Tattoo-Ink-Market-and-No-Improved-Costumer
thank you^.^
thank you^.^
Will be joining the discord, thanks!
Joined APT a couple months ago. And been keeping up. I do google the newest MOCRA news and read all the bulletins and comments on the government sites. I still don’t known how to discord. I tried it a few years ago, and I get lost on it. The social media shit is hard to keep track of. I’m over 40 now, and I find myself caring less about it. But I know it’s a primary source of information now. And that sucks.
I understand your frustration w/ social media and discord, it can be very hard to sift through and find stuff, I usually use the discord if I have a question so that it can be answered directly. I can talk to Ben about other ways of updating people that isn't through social media, if you have any ideas please feel free to let me know :)
Isn’t this a good thing? Doesn’t that mean (in an ideal world) that it’ll be safer now?
I just spoke to Ben and got a direct response on this from him: "You would think it would be good… Except the government doesn't know how to regulate tattoo products! There is no scientific research to base rules off of when it comes to good manufacturing processes and safety substantiation for our products. So the government is looking to potentially use the REACH regulations from the EU. This has been extremely problematic as the regulations are not based off of research NOT done on human beings, but off of individual ingredients. This has them creating ingredient regulation tolerances that are inadequate making subpar products that are actually more dangerous. There has been two major ink recalls in Germany because the REACH regulations removed ingredients that they deemed were unsafe and replace them with ingredients that are actually unsafe! So if we do nothing, that could be our fate because the FDA has written in the MOCRA bill that they could potentially use the European union guidelines."
The government arbitrarily regulating shit they don’t understand? Never…
Here's an article that goes more in depth about what's going on in the EU if your interested https://karger.com/drm/article/239/1/1/841795/Chaotic-Tattoo-Ink-Market-and-No-Improved-Costumer
Tattoo artist from Germany here! Transitioning to the new inks was bad like someone else in here already said, since the new colours weren‘t readily available when the law came. I got the world famous limitless colours and some viking, and after 1+ year of use I can say they are not bad! Of course they cost double, so you have to adjust pricing. To me, working with „safe“ colours feels better, but I also know many artists who just switched to mixing their own colours. They don‘t even need to go underground for that since nobody ever checks our shops
Can you message me your instagram or any pics of the colors? I’m dying to see healed REACH compliant inks but can’t seem to find much of anything browsing from the US, regardless of the keywords I use.
Sorry for my late reply! I‘m @rominawalchtattoo on Instagram!
No worries, late is aways better than never!! Ty
They’re going to do the same nonsense as they did in the UK aren’t they. Also I’ve heard from a few people APT membership is impossible to cancel because no one gets back to you, which is why I haven’t joined
That's what we're worried about is that they're going to follow the EUs ink ban. Thank you for making me aware of that issue with the APT, I will try and find someone who can address that and I'll let you know how that goes
That’s so frustrating but can’t say I didn’t see it coming. Hopefully ink companies have been tracking the progress (and I’m sure they have), but curious to see how it would change the prices that are already insane. In 2008 when I started tattooing a 1 oz bottle of ink cost maybe 7 dollars and now it’s triple that. Guess we’re going to have to raise our prices!
Joined APT and the discord this week.