Tattoo parlors don't want county to end inspections

Plenty of people get tattoos or piercings as an act of rebellion.

The artists who draw them, ironically, are all for rules.

When the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment quit inspecting body-art businesses or enforcing state and local regulations several weeks ago, one might have expected a collective sigh of relief from the owners of tattoo and piercing businesses. No more fees or licenses. No more visits by The Man.

Instead, business owners are perhaps the loudest critics of the move, which saves the Health Department $27,950 in its effort to slash about $507,000 from its budget. The Board of Health is scheduled to vote on whether to make the cut permanent at a public meeting July 16. Tattoo artists are expected to show up en masse in hopes of persuading the board to look elsewhere for its cuts.

"The tattoo community for decades has been looked at as a dirty, gross kind of thing, and so they kind of want some legitimacy," said Mike Stone, owner of A to Z Masters Tattooing and Piercing, on B Street near Fort Carson.

Old-school tattoo artists in Colorado Springs are not nostalgic for the days when ink was a thing for sailors and bikers and little thought was given to things like hygiene. While some restaurants have been known to resent health inspections, tattoo businesses have generally been welcoming.

The body-art buffs of today are far from a stereotype. Customers might include a woman in her 50s wandering in for a first tattoo, a hard-core piercing enthusiast who wants his earlobes stretched to halfdollar holes, and working professionals coming in on weekends to add to their tattoo collections.

For an industry that's gone from taboo to mainstream, inspections and regulations have kept the riffraff out and ensured quality control, some say.

"Just because you can draw doesn't mean you can permanently mark somebody," said John Thomas, known in the industry as Tattoo John T. His family owns Freaky's Tattoo and Body Piercing, which has two El Paso County locations and four others in Colorado. "Anybody can go online and order tattoo equipment. ... "Kids can get on the Internet and start ordering stuff and butchering people."

He was part of a focus group of local body-art business owners who helped beef up state regulations in 1996. It was also an industry effort that got the El Paso County Health Department to augment state regulations with some of its own, said Rick Miklich, the county's director of environmental health. The Health Department added the new rules and ramped up its inspections in June 2007, he said.

If the halt on inspections becomes permanent, Thomas fears the floodgates will open for tattooing in basements and seedy motel rooms, and there will be a rise in shoddy practices that early business inspections turned up, such as sending people away without instructions on how to care for their tattoos or piercings. At the very least, an unsanitary or improperly done tattoo or piercing can cause infection; at worst, it can cause blood-borne diseases such as hepatitis B and C or tetanus. The Health Department would still investigate complaints of disease or illness arising from a visit to a tattoo business.

Stone doesn't expect existing businesses to throw cleanliness out the window if inspectors quit coming, and he believes some of the regulations were unnecessary and misguided. Still, he would hate to see them go.

"I like having my certificate on the wall. I like being able to tell people I'm getting inspected on a regular basis," he said.

Body-art businesses face a checklist of 30 possible code violations. They include the broad and obvious ones, such as proper training and sterilizing, to minor details such as having enough soap and paper towels on hand. Inspectors also conduct even more extensive plan reviews for start-up businesses and offer blood-borne pathogen training.

The inspections, said Miklich, were designed to educate rather than punish businesses, and the Health Department has so far avoided punitive actions against them.

Most businesses have been in violation at one time or another, as shown in inspection records reviewed by The Gazette. Among them: an artist who hadn't completed a class, people not washing hands before handling sterilized equipment, a pet bed in the tattooing area. Once aware of the violations, they've generally corrected them.

If the inspection program isn't resurrected, it will be buyer beware, and that might not happen. Some customers ask questions about sterility, procedures or training. Many do not. "It's not a really safe assumption." Stone said.

That's precisely what worries health officials at Fort Carson, whose soldiers form a core part of the local tattoo market. The Army post has requested inspection records from the Health Department and is considering whether to recommend restrictions on where soldiers go to get tattooed, said Capt. Jason Krantz, chief of environmental health.

A handful of businesses are on the military's offlimits list, a designation that orders all local military personnel to stay away and can lead to discipline if they don't. Those businesses include a bar, several massage parlors and spas, and about two dozen rental properties owned by an uncooperative landlord.

It is no easy feat to land on the list. A committee of military commanders must approve the blacklisting of any business, and the decision is subject to appeal. At the same time, Krantz said his department is concerned about the health of its soldiers when there are no inspections.

No one seems to argue the merits of the inspections. But for a department that's lost 35 percent of its county funding since 2001, tattoo parlor inspections face stiff competition from other programs, including state-required restaurant and foodretailer inspections - and the county is conducting fewer than half of those.

Thomas, of Freaky's, recently called the Health Department to check on the status of certifications he'd paid for but not received. He was told it was moot and he'd be refunded the licensing fees he'd paid. It's a check he'd gladly give back. "I would rather have regulations than a refund any day," he said.

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CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0198 or brian.newsome@gazette.com  

THE MEETING

The El Paso County Board of Health will meet at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday to discuss and vote on suspending inspections and regulation of body-art businesses. The meeting will be in the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment auditorium, 305 S. Union Blvd. Call (719) 578-3101 for more information.