Safety and Health for Tattooists and Piercers

Tattooists and piercers work in an industry that is unique in opportunities and challenges. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) began visiting tattooing and piercing studios in the 1990s in response to workplace safety and health concerns raised by artists in the industry. Based on these visits and interviews with artists, we found many had concerns about exposures to blood and bloodborne diseases. As a result, we created the NIOSH Body Art Topic Page in 2007 in an effort to clarify how bloodborne pathogen rules and regulations apply to these workers and how artists can lower their risk of contact with blood.

We would like to better meet the needs of tattooists and piercers by addressing other problems or topics of concern among body artists.

Areas of interest include:

1. Concerns tattooists and piercers may have about their work environment and/or work practices.
2. Topics or problems artists would like us to address.
3. What we can do to improve the body art topic page.

Please share your thoughts and suggestions below.

From these suggestions, we hope to better address these problems by more frequently updating our topic page and incorporating a spotlight section called “Get to the point.”

If you would like to learn more about body art, or comment more generally, you may also visit our previous body art blog entry from February 2008.

Amy Mobley, MS, is a Health Communications Specialist in NIOSH’s Industrywide Studies Branch in the Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations & Field Studies.

Everett Lehman, MS, MBA, is a supervisory epidemiologist in NIOSH’s Industrywide Studies Branch in the Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations & Field Studies.