Smart tattoos can disappear

2006-04-26 16:28

Paris - Embarrassed by that tattoo with the name of a former lover? Or those characters in Chinese that you thought meant "eternal love" but later found out meant "penguin hairball"?

Laser treatment gets rid of these unwanted body markings, but it can take a dozen treatments to bleach away conventional tattoo pigments.

The process is expensive, painful and sometimes fails to remove the entire tattoo, leaving a ghost picture on the skin.

But, for those prepared to wait a little longer before going under the needle, help is on the way.

According to the British weekly New Scientist, chemists in the United States have developed a range of smart pigments that can disappear with a single laser treatment.

The inks have been approved by the US food and drug administration (FDA) for use in drugs, cosmetics, food and medical devices.

They are readily absorbed by the body and, for that reason, have never been used in tattoos - until now.

A team led by Rox Anderson at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston has found a way around this problem - by encapsulating the ink in microscopic polymer beads that measure one to three micrometres across.

This makes them tiny enough to be injected into the skin to form the tattoo.

To get rid of the tattoo, a laser splits the beads open, dumping the dye into the skin where it is safely absorbed and fades away.

- AFP