While most people are sensible when its comes to getting a tattoo, a survey conducted in January 2012 revealed that 1 in 7 young adults regret their inkings.

The most common reasons being “I was too young” “I was drunk” “ I am scarred for life” “ I don,t like it”. It seems that those in their late teens to early twenties who got inked were looking at ways they could remove their tattoos later on in adult life due to work issues or life events.

Several owners opt to cover an unwanted tattoo with a new tattoo. This is generally known as a cover-up. A successful cover up remains solely in the hands off the tattoo artist and his ability to visualise beyond the existing tattoo.

Now if we were still living in the dark ages, tattoo removal consisted of injecting the inking with lime, wine, garlic or pigeon droppings - YUK. Thankfully, we have moved on a lot since then and Q switch lasers are now used and black dark colours can now be removed, albeit the scarred tissue will take months to heal, and the smell of burning flesh is not to everyone's taste. This can also take several sessions, often weeks apart to give the skin time to heal before the next onslaught. It can also be rather costly running into hundreds or sometimes thousands of pounds depending on how big or elaborate the tattoo is.

These lasers use pulses that shatter the pigments of the Tattoo which is then absorbed by the body via the lymphatic system. This can take between 6 to 20 sessions depending on the colours of the Tatt. Lighter colours are more difficult to treat than dark colours due to Pastels containing high concentrations of titanium dioxide, which reflect the light, thus causing a throwback to the laser beam.

Laser removal can be very painful and the stench of burning flesh can be hard to stomach so we now have two alternative disposal methods that are in development.

Dalhouse University graduate student Alek Falkenham has developed a cream that promises safe and painless removal you can read about it here, and at only a few dollars, this would be a easier and less expensive option. Lets hope he can do it, i am sure it would be a huge hit.

and US Stemcell Inc. and CLEARIT LLC are working together on a product called ERASER (TM) and if cleared it could be available as early as 2017