Frequently Asked Questions

Poli International is a body-jewelry manufacturer and materials-safety authority, not a content farm or a generic tattoo-tool site. Our focus is materials science and regulatory compliance, including REACH restrictions, implant-grade material verification and the BioFlex polymer we created. The free tools and technical wiki exist to raise the safety and documentation standard across the body-art industry.

The tool suite and wiki are funded by jewelry sales, not paywalls or ads. Free, professional-grade tools for practitioners and informed clients are how we make our materials-safety work useful at scale. The one paid product is REACH Monitor PRO, a compliance-tracking subscription, and it is clearly labelled as such.

No. Our tools are triage and education aids, not a substitute for a doctor, a professional piercer or a licensed tattoo artist. Where a situation suggests infection, an allergic reaction or a medical contraindication, the correct step is to see a healthcare professional.

Every figure, date, standard number and factual claim is sourced to a primary reference, and we never fabricate a statistic to sound authoritative. Our full sourcing and verification process is documented on our data methodology page.

"Implant-grade" is not a government-issued certification. It is a claim that a material meets a specific standard, and it is only meaningful if the supplier can produce a mill test report showing the heat number and composition. A supplier who says "our titanium is implant-grade" without documentation cannot have that claim verified. Always ask for the paperwork.

ASTM F136 covers the titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V ELI and requires mill certificates for verification. ASTM F138 covers 316LVM stainless steel and requires traceable composition analysis. ISO 10993 governs biological evaluation, including cytotoxicity and skin-sensitisation test reports. These are the documents that separate a verifiable safety claim from marketing language.

Under EN 1811, nickel release must stay below 0.5 micrograms per square centimetre per week for items in prolonged skin contact, and below 0.2 micrograms per square centimetre per week for post-piercing jewelry worn in a fresh wound. Nickel release, not total nickel content, is what drives sensitisation, which is why the limit is expressed as a release rate.

REACH is the EU chemical-safety regulation. REACH Regulation 2020/2081 restricts substances in tattoo and permanent make-up inks, limiting more than 4,000 substances including certain azo pigments and heavy metals. It is the reason many older ink formulations were reformulated or withdrawn in the EU. Studios should check pigments against the REACH and SVHC lists using the Colour Index (CI) numbers on the Safety Data Sheet.

BioFlex is a flexible, biocompatible polymer developed for body jewelry, tested against ISO 10993 biological-evaluation requirements. Its flexibility helps in fresh piercings, during pregnancy, and for anyone with a metal sensitivity, because it accommodates movement and swelling that a rigid metal bar cannot.

A bar that is too short creates the "cheese-cutter effect": it restricts blood flow to the developing fistula and presses into the tissue. A bar that is too long causes mechanical irritation as it moves and catches. Initial jewelry is usually fitted long to accommodate swelling, then downsized once the swelling settles.

Healing speed is dictated by blood supply. Earlobes and oral mucosa are highly vascularised and heal quickly. Cartilage is avascular, meaning it has no direct blood supply and relies on nutrient diffusion, which is why cartilage piercings can take 6 to 12 months or longer to heal fully.

An irritation bump is typically a hypertrophic response to mechanical stress: a firm bump next to the piercing, often from snagging, sleeping on it, or the wrong jewelry. A true infection is marked by foul-smelling, purulent (pus) discharge, increasing pain and redness, warmth, and sometimes systemic symptoms such as fever. Systemic symptoms or spreading redness mean you should see a doctor promptly.

Over-cleaning. Excessive cleaning disturbs the fibrin clot and the new epithelial cells that are trying to close the wound. The recommended protocol is a sterile saline solution (0.9% sodium chloride) twice daily, and otherwise leaving the piercing alone. More cleaning is not better healing.

Sterile 0.9% saline, applied twice a day. Avoid alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, tea-tree oil and harsh antibacterial soaps on a fresh piercing, since they irritate healing tissue. The guiding principle is "leave it alone" (sometimes written LITHA) beyond that simple saline routine.

Black ink (carbon black) is the most stable because its particles are large and chemically inert. Cool colours such as blue and green fade fastest because they rely on organic pigment molecules, for example copper phthalocyanine, that are more susceptible to UV photodegradation. Sun exposure is the single biggest controllable factor in how a tattoo ages.

Taper length controls how pigment is deposited. Short tapers give maximum rigidity for bold, saturated lines. Long tapers (around 2.5 mm and above) allow dynamic line-weight variation and are favoured for fine-line and realism work, where the artist wants a line to swell and thin within a single pass.

A flat-rate quote is normally the artist’s hourly rate multiplied by the estimated hours, plus a materials add-on. Complexity factors, such as size, detail, colour packing, placement and skin type, push the estimate up or down. Our tattoo price estimator is built on this same industry-standard model rather than an arbitrary per-piece figure.

No. Isotretinoin (Accutane) is an absolute contraindication for body art, and the accepted guidance is to wait at least six months after your last dose, because the drug impairs wound healing and skin integrity. Always follow your prescriber’s advice on timing.

Seek medical care if you have spreading redness, increasing pain, warmth, purulent or foul-smelling discharge, or any systemic symptoms such as fever or feeling unwell. These are signs of a possible infection rather than normal irritation, and they are outside the scope of any aftercare routine or online tool.

Yes. Nicotine causes vasoconstriction, which reduces peripheral blood flow and therefore the oxygen and nutrient delivery a wound needs to heal. Smokers should expect slower healing and factor that into their expectations and aftercare timeline.

Request mill test reports for every metal shipment and confirm the heat number and composition against the claimed standard (F136 or F138). For polymers, confirm ISO 10993 cytotoxicity and sensitisation data. Check ink pigments against the REACH and SVHC lists using the CI numbers on the Safety Data Sheet before use.

EN 13060 defines cycle parameters for small steam sterilisers. Studios should reference it for cycle validation and keep meticulous spore-test logs and cycle records, so that sterilisation is documented and auditable rather than assumed.

Comprehensive consent forms covering procedural risks, material disclosures (nickel and REACH-relevant pigments in particular) and post-procedure restrictions, plus sterilisation logs. Because consent forms hold sensitive medical data, store them in a searchable, GDPR-compliant structure with appropriate access controls and retention rules.

A suite of free professional tools (sizing, healing trackers, price estimators, compliance checkers and more), a technical wiki of reference entries, a data hub of sourced body-art statistics, and REACH Monitor for regulatory tracking. Start from the tools index or the wiki, or browse the glossary for terminology.

Yes. Our statistics and charts are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0): you may quote or embed them with attribution to Poli International and a link back to the source page. The exact citation format and our verification process are on the data methodology page.