Physicians recommended that before getting a tattoo or piercing, people need to understand the potential health issues associated with body art. Getting pierced or tattooed can result in both minor and major health problems. By understanding what these risks are, people can take precautions to prevent or reduce them.

The most dangerous health risk associated with permanent body art is getting infected with a bloodborne disease, a disease that is passed by contamination of blood. This happens if the tattoo needle or piercing who has a disease. Pathogens, disease-causing organisms, can live in dried blood for several days and in liquid blood for even longer. An individual receiveing a tattooo or piercing can come into contact with a pathogen if the equipment used has not been sterelized since its last use. Because of the risk, the American Red Cross requires that people wait a year after getting a tattoo to donate blood. The Red Cross also requires that people wait to donate blood for a year after they are pierced if they are unsure whether sterile needles were used during the piercing.

The most feared bloodborn diseas is HIV. HIV is a mutating retrovirus that attacks the human immune system and has been shown to cuase acquired immunodefiency syndrome (AIDS). AIDS results in the progressive descrution of a person’s immune system, eventually leaving him or her unable to fight off colds and infenctions. Many AIDS symptops are treatable, but the disease itself is incurable and leads to death. To date, there have been no documented cases of tattooing or piercing resulting in HIV, but people fear this because the possibilit exists.