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Teen tattoo parties raise risk of viral hepatitis
September 19, 2010 | Posted by taken from the Medical Observer 17-09-10
Health workers say teenagers are buying tattoo guns on the Internet and inking each other with little understanding of how to keep the equipment sterile.
Aboriginal sexual health officer Vicky Bardon, from Lismore, NSW, said some young people believed changing the needles was sufficient, not 
understanding that blood got into the ink containers.
A Facebook campaign against backyard tattooing, which has attracted nearly 6000 supporters internationally, identified that Australian young people were gathering for "tattoo parties", she said.
Margaret Johnson, creator of the Facebook page called Fight Against Backyard Tattooing and co-owner of a licensed tattoo studio in Brisbane, said legislation was needed to prevent sales of tattoo guns to non-professionals. "People who have no qualifications and know nothing about blood-borne diseases or cross-contamination are buying equipment off eBay and are tattooing at home," she said. Professional tattooists were seeing increasing numbers of botched tattoos, skin infections and septicaemia, she said, adding she knew of two women who had contracted hepatitis C from backyard tattooing.
Hepatitis Australia CEO Helen Tyrrell said there was a dearth of hard evidence about hepatitis infection from tattooing. "It could be fuelling a whole new level of the hepatitis C epidemic we just don't know," she said.
Professor Greg Dore, from the National Centre for HIV epidemiology and Clinical research, said the main risk for hepatitis C infection remained sharing drug-injecting equipment, accounting for most of Australia's 10,000 annual new hepatitis C infections.