I spoke with a trainee the other day and she told me an interesting story. She said that she had contracted pneumonia a couple of years ago.
She then noticed that after a day of laser tattoo treatments, she would have quite severe coughing fits. This continued for a couple of years. She was prescribed antibiotics, but they had no effect. It must have been viral.
At this point, she decided to try wearing N95 masks (respirators). The coughing fits stopped almost immediately. She says that she has not had a cough since!
This strongly indicates that the air she was breathing during the laser treatments was interacting with her respiratory system and causing the coughing. The N95 masks were clearly preventing her from inhaling the plume from the skin.
I published a report in 2018 (click here), which showed that ink particles can leave the skin, at high speed, during laser treatment of tattoos. I also questioned whether these ink particles could be carrying infectious biomaterials such as viruses or bacteria.
It appears that they might. Or, it maybe the actual tiny ink particles which were causing irritation of her lung tissues, after inhalation.
Either way, I think that this suggests that laser tattoo removal should be considered as a biohazard and treated as such with the use of masks, air filtration and good ventilation.
I recently wrote a booklet on the hazard of laser/IPL plume. In it I discuss the findings of some studies following laser hair removal, but I didn’t mention laser tattoo treatments. I will need to update the booklet now…
If you have suffered any similar following laser tattoo treatments, please contact me.
Hope this helps,
Mike.
Mike Murphy's Blog 
Wow, that’s scary. I do a lot of tattoo removal. I have not noticed any cough or anything though.
Brenda Musia Phone: (713) 816-5834
Me too! At least, as far as I remember. But, maybe it depends on whether you’ve had a respiratory problem beforehand, like this lady…
This is a great article. The risk to the person carrying out the treatment is often completely overlooked and even in a well ventilated room there can still be significant air contamination in my opinion. Safety protocols really only touch on the operator and the focus is on the client as it should be, but we also need to be aware of our health too. Thank you for sharing!