How to Sterilize Tattoo Equipment

Nothing is more important than keeping your equipment clean and preventing transmission of infectious diseases such as hepatitis, HIV, tuberculosis, and MRSA. Here is what you need to know.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Knowledge
• Autoclave
• Cold Sterilization Solutions
• Tip/Tube cleaning brushes

1. Use gloves and safety glasses while washing equipment that may be contaminated with other people's blood. Don't handle the items if you have any cuts or scrapes in your skin that may come in contact with blood/germs.

2. 

   Scrub the tips, grips, and tubes with cool, soapy water and use your tip-cleaning brushes to get all of the dried ink/blood. Scrub every piece, don't forget to remove the nuts from the grips. Don't use hot water as it can cause proteins and inks to coagulate, making it more difficult to remove any infectious agents present. Scrub extremely well. When you think it's clean, scrub again.

3. 
   Ultrasonic Cleaning

   Follow up with an ultrasonic cleaning to maximize removal of germs and residual ink. Ultrasonic cleaners vary in price, and require a special solution to help create cavitation in the cleaning solution. Note that ultrasonic cleaners do not sterilize, they simply clean the items.

4. 
   Stove-top autoclaves

   Use an autoclave to sterilize and store the tips, grips, and tubes in sterile bags until ready for next use. Note that autoclaves are very expensive, require maintenance, time, and PROPER USE to kill all pathogens. Any mishap during this stage can result in tattoo gear that is STILL UNSTERILE.

5. Invest in 100% disposable tips, tubes and grips. They usually cost about $1.00 each, are sterilized, sealed, and give you and your clients that extra peace of mind. Perfect for tattoo artists who want to be professional and clean, yet lack the expensive ultrasonic/autoclave machinery.

Tips & Warnings

• "Cold Sterilization" solutions like glutaraldehyde can be used to sterilize cleaned tips/tubes/grips. However these solutions are expensive, take hours to work, and need to be disposed of properly. They can cause eye, lung, skin irritation. These solutions may not completely sterilize depending on contamination, coagulated proteins, etc. present on the tubes, tips, grips.
• Recommended that tattoo artists get vaccinated for all the common communicable diseases, especially Hep A/B.
• Note that prions that cause CJD (the human equivalent of mad-cow disease) may not be eliminated at standard autoclave temperatures/pressures.
• Keep all autoclaved items and disposable tips/needles in their sealed containers until just before use. Doing otherwise means the equipment is NOT sterile.
• Keep your tattoo area clean, free of carpet, free of dust, uncluttered, and avoid cross contaminating your clients. CHANGE YOUR GLOVES everytime you touch something other than your clients cleaned tattoo area and your tattoo machine.

[MyJB]

on 10/3/2009 Never heard of this Autoclave sterilizer, but it seems reasonable to have one if you're a professional tattooist. Good article.