I constantly write in pen on my hand, because I say that “it’s much harder to lose your hand than a slip of paper!” Friends, parents, and teachers constantly tell me that I should stop, and that all the ink will give me cancer. While I’m pretty sure they’re full of crap, I just wanted to know if there’s any truth to their warnings. Will I get skin cancer if I continue to write on my hands?
No. How would that even be possible?
Also, if pen ink was known to cause cancer if you wrote on your skin, the FDA probably wouldn’t allow it to be used.
Are you using radioactive ink?
The FDA doesn’t regulate ink. The EPA and/or CPSC might have something to say about carcinogenic ink though.
If you can find the Material Safety Data Sheet for the ink you use, that should tell you whether there is anything in the ink to worry about. (I couldn’t find an MSDS for ball point ink. BIC has a web page http://www.bicworld.com/inter_us/stationery/faq/index.asp that has a “click here” for a link to a page with an MSDS for one of their products and and a source for info on others but the link is broken.)
If you’re writing and not tattooing*, then the ink is just touching the outermost layer of your skin, which you shed too regularly to become cancerous. So even if there were some carcinogenic substance in ball-point ink, you wouldn’t be giving yourself much more exposure than people who just handle pens regularly.
*not to imply that tattooing causes cancer. I have no idea about that.