Off topic - body piercing article (from The Times (of London)).
(URL for Times website (registration required, I think) is
the-times.co.uk )
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January 15, 2000
BRITAIN
Body piercers face scrutiny of the law
BY MELISSA KITE
BODY piercing is to be subject to tough new laws amid fears
that the fashion craze among teenagers is putting them at risk of
injury and infection.
Under regulations being drawn up by Yvette Cooper, the Public
Health Minister, piercing parlours will be required to join a
register and follow strict safety standards or risk being closed
down.
The move follows an outbreak of stories about dirty needles and
untrained practitioners.
Devotees are having noses, lips, tongues, belly buttons and
genitals pierced, despite the risk of serious blood loss, Aids,
hepatitis B and septicaemia if good practice is not followed.
The trend has been led by celebrities such as Madonna. Even
Zara Phillips, the 18-year-old daughter of the Princess Royal,
displays a tongue stud.
Only London councils, however, have the power to inspect and
license body-piercing shops and there are no hygiene checks on
the thousands of unregistered piercers outside the capital.
Common complications include damaged teeth from ill-fitting
tongue bars, impaired vision from eyebrow rings in the wrong
place and badly fitting jewellery becoming lodged in swollen
flesh.
The experiences of Natasha McNamee are typical. Like
thousands of young women, the 22-year-old from Belfast
regards body art as the last word in chic and has undergone 16
piercings, from her eyebrows to her belly button and beyond.
She has nine rings in her ears, another in her nipple, a stud in
her nose and an iron bar in her tongue.
The adornments have made her the envy of her friends, but to
get them she has suffered severe pain, infection, swelling and,
on one occasion, came close to severing an artery. Indeed,
some of the piercers she has used make the barber-surgeons of
the first Elizabethan age look highly skilled.
At the age of 18 and not knowing what safety standards to
expect, she put herself in the hands of hairdressers and friends
armed with little more than a needle and a bottle of antiseptic.
When a beautician attempted to pierce her lip, she used the
wrong jewellery, ripped the skin and left her bleeding. The
would was so badly off centre that she had no choice but to let
it heal closed. She still has a large scar, but intends to have more
piercings..
She believes the popularity of body piercing among young girls
is largely attributable to the number of celebrities who display
face jewellery. "You see it all over the place, it's the whole
celebrity thing," she said. "It used to be that people didn't talk
about it; it was under their clothes and secret but now people
are really proud of it."
Norman Noah, of the Communicable Diseases Surveillance
Centre in London, said that the huge growth in body piercing
had taken ministers by surprise.
Consequently, the present laws used by local councils, which he
helped to draft in the early 1980s, applied only to ear piercing.
"We didn't realise then that body piercing was going to become
so popular," he said, "but some of it is quite dangerous,
especially the belly button. I have seen children screaming with
pain and fathers who have used a pair of pliers to pull rings out
after they have become lodged in swollen flesh.
"With the tongue, they often pierce the blue vein underneath it
by mistake, which causes a lot of blood loss."
David "Skull" Bingham, a Belfast-based piercing and tattoo
expert, who took part in recent consultations with the
Department of Health, sees the results of bad piercing every
day. "There are too many people who operate in the shadows in
this business," Mr Bingham said. "We spend a lot of time doing
fix-ups and repairing bad jobs. Some people should simply be
told that part of their body is not the right shape to be pierced,
but a lot of piercers do it anyway because they want the
money."
He believes that ultrasonic sterilisers, disposable needles and
surgical steel jewellery should all be made compulsory, but he
gave warning to ministers against over-regulation, which he said
would only drive the industry underground.
Ms Cooper confirmed that legislation would be brought in as
soon as possible to require piercers to register and observe
bylaws on hygiene and cleanliness.
Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd. |
