'Five-year' tattoos will not wear off, says skin expert BY SHIRLEY ENGLISH
A new craze for so-called temporary tattoos, which are said to disappear naturally within five years, is based on false claims, a plastic surgeon said yesterday. Arthur Morris, a consultant at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, said the tattoos would not disappear. Offered by some hairdressing salons for three times the cost of a permanent tattoo, the temporary tattoos are said to use ink that will rise to the top of the skin and vanish after three to five years because the needles do not breach the epidermis - the outermost layer of skin cells. But Dr Morris, who also lectures at Dundee University, said: "There will be an awful lot of very upset people in a few years' time. A tattoo only lasts if it goes into the dermis [the layer of cells below the epidermis]. In other words, there is no possible middle ground. Nobody could guarantee that it will fade within five years because it is not physically possible to do that.“ Dr Morris, who has been treating patients with unwanted tattoos for 33 years, said: ”Tattoos are either permanent or they are very temporary. There is no way I know of that a tattoo could last for a few years and then simply disappear. The biggest difficulty may be that fading will be variable and patchy. Some parts will go deeper and will last, while other, superficial parts may disappear quite quickly.“ Lal Hardy, secretary of the Association of Professional Tattoo Artists, said: ”Professional tattoo studios won't go near these so-called temporary tattoos. It is hairdressers and market stalls who are doing them. The people doing it may even believe the tattoos are temporary, but those getting them are guinea pigs.“ CD International in Newcastle supplies ”Temptoos“ to hair salons across Britain. Yvonne Carter, its marketing director said: ”We don't claim we are selling temporary tattoos. We are selling Temptoos, which are like a pigmentation. Salons should be telling their clients that they don't or might not disappear, but we as suppliers don't take any responsibility for third parties.“ Kate Leisk, 20, a second-year environmental science student at Stirling University, had a ”Temptoo“ of a 12-inch dragon across her shoulder and neck. She paid £60 at a hairdresser near her parents' home in Sussex for the decoration in January after seeing an advert for it. She said yesterday: ”I had wanted a tattoo for years but like most people the permanence of it always put me off. I don't want to have a huge tattoo up my neck when I'm 30. The fact it may be permanent still hasn't quite sunk in. If I had known, I wouldn't have had it done." The Times