Friday 6 January 2012

Bang bang - my baby shot me down

Unless you dress your baby in pink, frilly crap or blue, most people wouldn't be able to tell the gender until they start approaching toddlerhood and gaining physical characteristics that define them as boys or girls.  Therefore, some people choose to pierce their baby girl's ears. When she's only a few months [if not weeks] old. With a piercing gun.

*RAGE*

Stupid egoistic uninformed idiots! If you take offence, then deal with it. I'm not going to moderate my tone nor my language about this topic.

Firstly, piercings should be a personal choice not something imposed by the parent[s] or anyone else just because it is cute.

Second of all, a piercing is an open wound and a baby that is merely a few weeks old will not know how to take care of it - and neither do most parents.  This means that they will not be able to identify any potential problems, nor follow a correct aftercare.  Which will lead to a shitload of problems that may arise either there and then, or even several years later.

Thirdly piercing guns are dangerous and unsanitary.  Why? I'll break it down for you.

That is what a piercing gun looks like.  The gun itself is not a single-use instrument, meaning it is used on several clients over and over again.  The gun itself is not autoclaved - meaning it is never sterile. 

"What's an autoclave?" you may ask.  An autoclave is a machine used to sterilsie medical equipment by doctors and dentists, and it is also used within the body modification industry to sterilise needles and jewelry along with other tools of the trade such as clamps, for example.  This means that everything is uber-clean - in the same way that a surgeon's tools are uber-clean before they are used to slice and dice you.

"So what?"
To quote APP [Association of Professional Piercers]:

"The lack of ability to sterilise the ear piercing guns is one of the issues of concern about such equipment. Blood can aerosolise (become airborne in essentially microscopic particles) and contaminate the gun. If any part of the stud touches any part of the contaminated gun, there is the possibility of transmitting a disease-causing micro organism.

The Hepatitis virus can live for extended periods on inanimate surfaces, therefore transmission of such disease through this type of equipment is possible."

Yep. Hepatitis.  Guess which other virus can be contracted via cross contamination?

HIV.

This means that the dangers you face if you share a needle with another person are also encountered by simply opting to get your ears pierced by a piercing gun.

Oh - if you're not sure what cross contamination means, it essentially is when bacteria is carried from one object to another object; from one object to a person; or from person to person.

Fourth point is this - the studs used to pierce with are blunt - meaning brute force is used.  It would be the equivalent of trying to cut through a block of wood with a butter knife.  This means that there is quite a bit of tissue trauma caused to the pierced area - namely the earlobes.  The studs also happen to be too short and do not accommodate for any swelling that may occur.  The fact that they have grooves in the back where the butterfly pin 'locks' means it will cause even more trauma to them poor abused earlobes if you try to remove the stud itself.  By not allowing any room for swelling, the jewelry can become embedded in the ear - or get infected.  This also means that it makes it extremely difficult to clean the piercing properly. Stud earrings also do not allow for as thorough cleaning as do hoop earrings, and while some people remove the studs early and change to hoops, this only adds to the trauma of the tissues, and prolongs the healing process.

Malfunction is always a very real possibility, and happens way too often.  This can occur in several ways - I have witnessed it myself a few times when someone I was with disregarded all the information I gave them and just went for the piercing gun purely because it was cheap. 

You can clicky here, here and here if you'd like to read a few articles about the topic.

The bottom line is this - if your head is stuck so far up your arse that you refuse to understand that it is a bad idea to pierce a baby's ears, at least have the decency to safeguard their health as much as possible and go to a reputable piercer who knows what they're doing and who dispenses good aftercare advice. 

I'm not able to recommend any good piercers on the island as I trust none of them - my piercer happens to be the lovely Ms Cale who works at True Blue Tattoo Studio in West Lakewood, Colorado.  I'm willing to wait a year or two until I manage to fly out to meet up with her and some other friends into body modification to get pierced. 

Cost should never be an issue, by the way.  You get what you pay for.

3 comments:

  1. I used to piss off staff in Claires quizzinng them on the saftey hazzards of piercing guns and if the studs they use are EU nickle compliant.

    I am luckier than you in that I am only having to take a detour on the way home from a trip to get my next mod done as my chosen piercers shop is around 4-4&1/2hrs drive away from me. We are heading further south than he is in England so am stopping on the way back home to Scotland (where mod laws are stricter for heavier mods). I am happy to travel or wait for quality work if I can't afford it these days as what I'm getting done next is fixing a problem that stems from improper placement from a piercing gun. Lesson learned the hard way (thankfully without diease).

    Am sure that if creature wants a mod it will be planned long in advance with guidence from mum finding the right person for them.

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  2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKCW76znIwk

    That video explains it clearly as can be for me! Every time I see parents allowing their children to get pierced in the claires in town I feel the need to shout at them about all the dangers and ickiness they're putting their child through. It annoys me even more knowing there's an amazing piercing studio less than five minutes walk from claires!
    I'm lucky to have one of the best modifiers in the country in my town, if I didn't have him there I'd quite happily travel further. I think people need to respect their bodies more! Rant done :)

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  3. Cheers for that link Si - it pretty much demonstrates perfectly the Blunt Object Trauma issue!

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