The Occupational Hazards of Tattoo Artists: A Scoping Review

The art of tattooing involves exposure to physical, chemical, and biological risk factors that parallel procedural medical professions. While risks related to tattoos themselves have been discussed in the context of client safety, no summative literature on occupational risks to artists exists in academic literature today. This scoping review aims to characterize and catalogue the scope of the existing literature on occupational risk hazards faced by tattoo artists. This scoping review was conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology for scoping reviews and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) reporting guidelines. An a priori protocol was developed and registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF). After preliminary searches, two independent reviewers selected literature based on the inclusion criteria on occupational risk factors for tattoo artists. These results were tabulated and examined narratively. Results were categorized based on risk type into five categories: musculoskeletal complaints, biological hazards, sharp instrument injury, psychosocial risk, and chemical hazards. The largest number of studies examined biological risks. This scoping review demonstrates that despite clearly defined occupational hazards, the academic literature addressing these hazards among tattoo artists remains limited and methodologically narrow. The limited existing studies rely on self-reported, cross-sectional designs and focus on biological risks, sharps-related dangers, and musculoskeletal risks, with significantly less attention given to chemical and psychological risks. Future research should prioritize objective and observational methodologies, with consideration made for regionally specific professional requirements.