Only days after Brandon’s post last week about his adventures in trying to get a friend pierced in Rockland County, NY, ironically, the Rockland Journal News (Local Newspaper) put out an article about body piercing in the County. One of the shops mentioned is the one that told him not to trust the piercer. What do you think of this article?
Fashion vs. health on body piercing
By JANE LERNER
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: October 22, 2005)
When she was 17, Diana Mango really wanted to get a body piercing, but she feared that no professional would do it because of her age.
So one day at school, Mango’s friend took a sewing needle — disinfecting it first in mouthwash — and pierced her tongue, the Stony Point resident recalled.
“I was naive back then,” said the 21-year-old piercing aficionado, who has since taken her business to Tattoo FX in Stony Point. “But I really wanted a piercing.”
She didn’t get sick from the do-it-yourself tongue piercing, but Mango thinks it’s wise to put more rules in effect to promote safety.
As body piercing moves more into the mainstream, some medical professionals and public health officials think the practice needs to be regulated.
Rockland is considering joining a growing number of communities around the country that regulate body piercing.
“This is a semi-surgical procedure that flies below anyone’s radar,” Dr. Jeffrey Oppenheim, a neurosurgeon, said at last month’s meeting of the Rockland County Board of Health. “You need all kind of licenses and training to remove a bunion from someone’s foot, but you don’t need anything to pierce highly vascular parts of the body. There’s something wrong with that.”
Some body-piercing artists agree that it’s time for regulations.
“It would make the piercer’s job a lot easier,” said Draygon Xandoval, who does piercings at In Your Skin in White Plains. “It would be excellent if there was a law we could point to when we tell a kid that we won’t pierce anyone under 18.”
Most tattoo parlors already do some type of self-regulation of body piercing. Xandoval, for example, refuses to pierce anyone under 18, even with parental permission.
At Modern Age Tattoo, which has locations in Nanuet and Haverstraw, owner Rob Balter requires everyone getting a piercing to sign a consent form. For teens under 18, he requires that a parent be present while the procedure is done. And he won’t do piercings of anyone under the age of 14, even with parental consent.
“I could pierce a 12-year-old’s belly button,” Balter said. “But I don’t. Morally, I don’t believe a kid that age should get one.”
Most of the equipment he uses to pierce the body is disposable. The items that are reused are sterilized between uses.
“I’ve been doing this for 22 years,” he said. “I know what I’m doing. I really don’t think new regulations are necessary.”
New City resident Concetta Passariello, 20, who got her eyebrow pierced at Modern Age in Nanuet in September, said she filled out consent forms, provided identification and answered a lot of questions before her piercing.
By contrast, she said, the shop in New York City where she had her lip pierced this month didn’t ask any questions.
Mike De Luca, owner of Tattoo FX in Stony Point, said regulations wouldn’t change the way he does business. He already requires consent forms and parental approval, and he won’t pierce anyone under the age of 15 “even though I get mothers bringing in girls as young as 11,” he said.
De Luca said he isn’t opposed to the idea of some kind of rules governing body piercings.
“If they want to have regulations on it, go ahead,” he said. “I’m not for it or against it. It would make the public feel better to know there is some kind of regulation.”
Regulations on body piercing are becoming more common, said Jim Weber, spokesman for the Association of Professional Piercers, a group based in Albuquerque, N.M.
“It’s because piercing has become so mainstream,” he said. “It used to be a fringe practice, and the thinking was that if you did something like that, you deserved what you got.”
Weber said he was in favor of “well-informed” legislation governing body piercing.
“Good legislation sets out … minimum standards — what the piercer has to do to maintain a certain level of safety for the client and the operator,” he said.
In 2002, New York state added a requirement to its public health law requiring establishments that perform body piercings to get a permit from the state Department of Health.
But the funding to regulate and issue licenses to such establishments was never provided in the state budget.
Claire Pospisil, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health, said the state was “in the process of developing regulations to comply with the law.”
Counties currently have the ability to investigate complaints regarding body piercings and tattoos, she said.
The state Senate proposed a law that would make branding or piercing the body of a person under 18 a crime. The proposal, co-sponsored by state Sen. Thomas Morahan, R-New City, passed the Senate but never made it out of the Assembly.
Few local health departments have considered regulating body piercing.
Dr. Michael Fiorillo, a Pearl River plastic surgeon and president of the Rockland County Medical Society, said he had seen numerous cases of infections arising from body piercing.
“It should be regulated,” he said. “It can lead to serious infections.”
Dr. Joan Facelle, Rockland County’s commissioner of health, said no specific guidelines had been proposed. The county Board of Health will discuss the issue again at its monthly meeting on Wednesday.
There already are regulations on tattoo parlors, most of which also offer body piercing. Any new county rule probably would target those same businesses, Facelle said.
“It’s an invasive procedure,” she said. “It has the potential to cause problems.”
Even some people who have gotten body piercings think it’s time to regulate the process.
Jessica Hudgens, an 18-year-old Rockland Community College student, said she got her belly button pierced at a tattoo parlor in Middletown, N.Y., when she was 15.
No one asked her how old she was or if her parents approved, recalled Hudgens, whose mother certainly did not approve. She said she hid her pierced belly button from her mother — as well as the infection that she got in her navel soon after.
“If I had a 15-year-old daughter and she went out and got her belly button pierced, I’d be pretty upset,” Hudgens said. “It’s a stupid thing to do.” - The Rockland Journal News
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