CEHA 2024

In our lifetime, we’ve seen a significant increase in the popularity of body art, defined as tattooing, piercing, branding, scarification, and cosmetic tattooing. There are now over twenty-six thousand body art facilities in the United States alone; a number that has been steadily increasing at a rate of about 3% per year over the last decade. There are no federal regulations for body art or artists, so the regulatory responsibility of these facilities falls mainly on state and local health departments. Rapid industry growth means increasing stress on environmental health professionals.  Keeping up with the ever-evolving industry and high turnover of public health personnel has proved difficult for local health departments. They often do not have all the information, support, or resources needed to effectively do their jobs.

This presentation will discuss the resources surrounding body art that are available to environmental health professionals in Colorado. Resources include the newly released Body Art Model Code and Annex, the BAMC Adoption Toolkit, inspector job aids, asynchronous and in-person Body Art Facility Inspector Training (BAFIT) opportunities, NEHA Body Art Policy Statements, NEHA Body Art Newsletter, Association of Professional Piercers (APP) Core Essentials online courses, industry trainings, and more. These resources can be utilized by jurisdictions across the country to update code language, deepen understanding through education, enhance body art regulation programs, ultimately protecting public health. During this presentation, we will give an overview of these resources, explain exactly where they can be accessed, and discuss how the resources can be used by regulators. There will be an opportunity for regulators to submit new resource development ideas as well. Having been involved in the process of creating and gathering body art resources, we understand how difficult they are to find and that many of them are under-utilized. We want to give environmental health professionals tangible knowledge and tools that positively impact their ability to protect public health.