A campaign has been launched by Tameside council, Greater Manchester, to alert young people and their families to the illegality and the potential life-threatening risks of having a tattoo under the age of 18, as children as young as 12 seek to copy celebrities such as the Beckhams and Britney Spears.
The move comes after the discovery that an unregistered tattooist was targeting young people and had tattooed more than 100 local teenagers, for as little as £5 a time. The campaign, How Much Did Your Tattoo Really Cost?, stresses that not only is tattooing an under-18 illegal, but HIV, hepatitis and septicaemia could be the tragic consequences of a visit to a tattooist working without arrangements for clean needles.
A helpline set up by the council received more than 300 anxious responses from people who had been to the unregistered tattooist. Of these, 17 were under 15 years old and 106 were under 19. Some were as young as 12. More than 290 respondents were offered tests for blood-borne diseases. No one has so far showed signs of any life-threatening illness, but public health workers fear that those people most at risk have not come forward.
One of those who responded to the helpline was 17-year-old Shilane Kirk, who went with five fellow pupils during her lunch hour from All Saints Catholic College, Dukinfield, to have a "tribal" tattoo at the bottom of her back for £10. The equivalent by a registered tattooist would have cost around £85.
Kirk says: "I knew it was illegal, and the flat was really scruffy and dirty, but I wanted one because all my mates had one. I didn't know anything about the diseases you can catch."
Ian Saxon, Tameside council's head of environmental health, says: "There is plenty of publicity about the dangers of unprotected sex, but there are similar risks with tattooing." His department's poster campaign has the support of the local primary care trust and the health protection unit and is going into all 20 of the borough's schools and its colleges. Other local authorities nationally have shown an interest.
Some 29% of Britons aged 25-34 have tattoos. Eight years ago, there were 300 tattoo parlours in the UK; now there are more than 1,500.
Celebrity tattooist Louis Molloy, whose clients include David and Victoria Beckham, is a spokesman for the British Tattoo Artists Federation. He believes the answer is to stop sites such as e-Bay selling the equipment over the net and enabling unlicensed operators to set up in business for less than £75.
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