Page 23 - An Introduction to Laser Tattoo Removal

Chapter 2 – Fundamentals of Laser Tattoo Removal v1.0
Iain continues “during the tattooing, the artist might decide to finish off with a ‘dark red’.” To obtain this, they may add “a couple of drops of red to this light green ink to make a ‘dark’ red. So, what appears to be ‘light green’ and ‘dark red’ could easily be a multitude of coloured inks.”
Clearly, this approach to mixing various inks has a significant effect on any future laser treatment, since all such treatments are colour-dependent! The fact is, when we ‘look’ at tattoos, we don’t really have any real idea which colours are in there. In this instance, we cannot ‘trust our eyes’!!
In fact, this is one of the reasons why many treatments do not proceed as we might expect – the tattoo ink we are treating may contain all sorts of colours we simply cannot see (Mike wrote a blog post on this).
Composition of Tattoo Pigments
Colour
Materials
Comment
Black
Iron Oxide (Fe3O4) Iron Oxide (FeO) Carbon Logwood
Natural black pigment is made from magnetite crystals, powdered jet, wustite, bone black, and amorphous carbon from combustion (soot). Black pigment is commonly made into India ink (which was long used in home-made, amateur tattoos).
Logwood is a heartwood extract from Haematoxylon campechisnum, found in Central America and the West Indies.
Brown
Ochre is composed of iron (ferric) oxides mixed with clay. Raw ochre is yellowish. When dehydrated through heating, ochre changes to a reddish colour.
Ochre
Red
Cinnabar (HgS) Cadmium Red (CdSe) Iron Oxide (Fe2O3) Naphthol-AS pigment
Iron oxide is also known as common rust. Cinnabar and cadmium pigments are highly toxic. Naphthol reds are synthesized from Naptha. Fewer reactions have been reported with naphthol red than the other pigments, but all reds carry risks of allergic or other reactions.
Orange
disazodiarylide and/or disazopyrazolone cadmium seleno-sulfide
The organics are formed from the condensation of 2 monoazo pigment molecules. They are large molecules with good thermal stability and colour-fastness.
Flesh
Ochres
(iron oxides mixed with clay)
Yellow
Cadmium Yellow (CdS, CdZnS) Ochres
Curcuma Yellow Chrome Yellow (PbCrO4, often mixed with PbS) Disazodiarylide
Curcuma is derived from plants of the ginger family; aka turmeric or curcumin. Reactions are commonly associated with yellow pigments, in part because more pigment is needed to achieve a bright colour.
Green
Chromium Oxide (Cr2O3), called Casalis Green or Anadomis Green Malachite [Cu2(CO3)(OH)2] Ferrocyanides and Ferricyanides Lead chromate Monoazo pigment
Cu/Al phthalocyanine
Cu phthalocyanine
The greens often include admixtures, such as potassium ferrocyanide (yellow or red) and ferric ferrocyanide (Prussian Blue)
Blue
Azure Blue
Blue pigments from minerals include copper (II) carbonate (azurite), sodium aluminium silicate (lapis lazuli), calcium copper silicate (Egyptian Blue), other cobalt aluminium oxides and chromium oxides. The safest blues and greens are copper salts, such as copper phthalocyanine. Copper phthalocyanine pigments have FDA approval
Cobalt Blue Cu-phthalocyanine
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Chapter 2 LEVEL A Laser Tattoo Removal
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