Wiz Khalifa is known for saying “ink my whole body, I don’t give a mother ___” But his tune might change after hearing this new study about tattoos and a potential cancer link.
Researchers from Lund University in Sweden conducted a study involving almost 12,000 people and found that people with tattoos had a 21% higher risk of developing lymphoma. Tattoos might be causing cancer because of the ink.
We already know that when the tattoo ink is injected into the skin, the body interprets this as something foreign that should not be there and the immune system is activated. A large part of the ink is transported away from the skin, to the lymph nodes where it is deposited.
Before beginning the experiment, researchers hypothesized that the size of your tattoo might be associated with higher chance of having cancer, but found that it actually has no effect whether if you have your entire chest tattooed compared to someone who has a small tattoo taking up minimal space.
Because there’s not much experimentation out there regarding this topic, they say they plan on investigating this further in other studies and other possible cancer links.
One can only speculate that a tattoo, regardless of size, triggers a low-grade inflammation in the body, which in turn can trigger cancer. The picture is thus more complex than we initially thought.
