Lymphoma - correlation between cancer and tattoos?

The university of Lund recently published a study pointing to a weak correlation between tattoos and lymphoma. The size of the tattoos or the quantity did not seem to affect the correlation. It has been known for some time that tattoo ink can be found in nearby lymph nodes, but serious or long term health risks are still relatively unknown.

The study showed that the risk of getting lymphoma increased with 21% when being tattooed even when controlling for other risk factors such as age and smoking. However, one should take into consideration that lymphoma is a very rare disease and this is a group result which should carefully be avoided to be applied on individuals. Since this type of cancer is this rare, one should keep in mind that even though a correlation between tattoos and lymphoma was distinguished in this study, the risk of getting lymphoma is still very very minor. Other things to question here are also whether the participants were tattooed with new/old tattoo ink or with better/worse pigmentation. Perhaps they are even tattooed abroad with less controlled colours? These questions could partly explain why no effect of quantity and size considering the ink seemed to affect this correlation. In other words there are still much to research when it comes to the subject of tattoos and health. Also - remember that the ink is constantly improving as well.

The message so far should be to raise awareness about the topic, but remember that data are still vague and the risks of tattooing so far distinguished are very minimal. To refrain from getting tattooed due to this potential risk is of course up to you, but it does feel like an exaggerrated fear in relation to general risks of just being alive. For those who want to check out the summary of this study, could go here. The full-text study is published in these journals.