14 DAY TRIAL // Good news for all those who were thinking of getting a tattoo but were too afraid of having to explain to their future children what's with the flaming skull on their arm: the first permanent, removable tattoo was developed by a team of scientists. Most tattoos are made in times when teens or adults want to prove a point or their affiliation to a group of people. Unfortunately, there comes a time when the owner wants to forget about the tattoo and the story behind it and he finds himself facing a painful and complicated laser removing intervention.
Fortunately, the new technique can create tattoos that can be removed whenever the wearer wants it. Curiously, this technique had initially been developed to produce consumer products such as aspirin and cake mix.
A team of scientists at Brown University have created microencapsulated beads filled with dyes, which were mixed with a solution to create the ink for the tattoo. This ink contains no heavy metals or other toxins, thus being safer than most currently used ones, but it's also easily removed.
When the owners decide that the naked lady on the arm got too old, they undergo only one laser treatment, which breaks the beads apart and makes the body expel the dye inside the beads in a natural way, thus erasing the drawing.
The classical removal process is fairly complex and hurts like hell, taking up to 12 treatment sessions in order to clear most tattoos and the total cost of removing a complex one can reach a few thousand dollars.
"Microencapsulation is a real science," said researcher Edith Mathiowitz, "and a real art." The real art is helping people suffer less for the "sins" of their youth and allowing them to get rid of unwanted tattoos with less pain and at lower costs.