New Research Links Tattoos to Skin Cancer

Image by Nicolò Campo / LightRocket / Alishia Abodunde /Simon Bruty / Anychance via Getty / Futurism Studies Using a database that tracks the health outcomes of twins, scientists have found more evidence that getting tattoos may be linked to skin cancer. In a new paper published in the journal BMC Public Health, researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and Finland's University of Helsinki have found that among twins, tattooed individuals are roughly 1.62 times more likely to develop skin cancer than their un-inked siblings. Looking at data on more than 2,600 twins, the Danish scientists found that this link was even greater for people who had larger tattoos, defined as larger than palm-sized. The twins with bigger pieces were found to have skin cancer roughly three times more often than their siblings without tattoos. (Though it's not related explicitly to tattoos, it is worth noting that Denmark has some of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. Because the smal ... Read full article.