What makes a tattoo permanent?

Question

From what I understand, the dyes are injected into your skin. Do they stay there or become incorporated into the cells?

If it is injected under your skin, could it travel around your body?

Answer 1

The dye is injected between the layers of the skin. The ink doesn't incorporate into the cells since cells die off. Every time a cell died, it would take a small portion of the ink with it eventually removing the tattoo.

Answer 2

You're creating an open wound with a needle or set of needles that are puncturing your skin. They go down below the layers that flake off and into the deeper layers of the dermis that are more stable for creating scar tissue. The ink fills in the gaps left by the needles and settles into the skin, coloring it. Basically, all you're doing when you get a tattoo is making a colored scar. And by the way, the needles do NOT always hurt. It depends GREATLY on the artist, how heavy a hand they have, their equipment, your tolerance to pain, and placement of the tattoo.

Answer 3

The ink is tattooed into the dermal layer of the skin. The hydrator (fluid used to make the tattoo ink into a liquid) is absorbed and the ink particles (some like to say molecules) remain, some in cells, some between cells...pretty much wherever they are injected into that layer of skin because they are not of a size that would be affected by the body's pac-man (macrophages) system to clean it all up.

Answer 4

The particles which get injected into the skin from the ink lay outside of the cells. They are too large to be affected by the white blood cells which would normally absorb and get rid of foreign substances, so they just lay their unaffected..

Answer 5

What Makes A Tattoo Permanent

Answer 6

The ink is pressed beneath the skin with a needle and the skin heals over the ink.