Does writing on your hand with pen cause skin cancer?

Does writing on your hand with a pen cause skin cancer?

Writing on our hands is something that everyone else does. Isn't it? Correct me, if I'm wrong. While having an immediate urgent call, getting bored, or instantly writing our to-do's, we use our hands as a platform to write stuff when we are unable to find the notepads nearby. Although, we do this activity because of our laziness to wait and find notebooks for writing things.

But, we all wonder at some time in our life that inks are filled with toxic components? Did the markers or pen have poisonous or harmful side effects on our health? What core toxicity can it cause to our body? Many questions pretty much arise easily in our minds. 

The article below is going to help you pretty much in understanding the depth of the topic of risks associated with the pen ink when we use to write on our hands. 

Is there any danger of skin cancer by jotting down through a pen on our skin?  

Ink pens are generally nontoxic & come in two different types..e, water & permanent. Among these two types of ink pens, the water ones are non-dangerous as they get easily removed with fluid items. They don't leave any stains or side effects. It's far away from leading to skin cancer in the body.

Whereas, permanent pens are considered to be quite dangerous. Although the substances in this aren't toxic still it's considered to be harmful due to their permanent position in your skin. It might cause skin cancer not spontaneously but sometime in the future because the ink stays in your body forever.

It's considered poisonous because of the following reasons as mentioned below -  

• Walking the permanent marker isn't an easy task to do. You require even more toxic chemicals to remove it from the roots that can cause you even more harm than you can expect. 
• Users of permanent ink markers have reportedly revealed that the permanent ink leads to skin irritation problems especially in your nose, mouth, throat & sensitive part of your skin. It's because most of this ink is made up of alcohol that you might make you feel such symptoms. 
• It causes damage to your skin cells that further leads to change in skin color, texture, and other issues.
• This permanent ink consists of xylene. Xylene is considered to be one of the most toxic substances. It causes ill repercussions once it's inhaled by the people.

Various markers you find in the market consist of non-toxic labeling in them. Big, are they non-toxic? Well, with the recent research,  the markers that are printed with ACMI seal having non-toxic printed upon them are in reality not harmful to the art but can prove highly dangerous for the body art creations. People go and get tattooed having no toxic inks yet all these things carry the minimal weightage of giving birth to skin cancer yet that 1% risk is still there.

For having the ACMI seal in the product, it has to go through multiple toxicological experiments. The tests determine the inhalation and ingestion toxicity level of the substances used on that particular product. But these tests don't reveal the harmful side effects or toxicity level of the ink that enters your blood. It usually happens when the chemical contained in the ink reaches your bloodstream via any skin injury or cut, to any other sort of damage.

If such a thing happens, then it can turn up into something poisonous leading to skin cancer although the risks of this thing happening are very minimal with skin diseases you are prone to catching it faster. The ink contains some solvents & some pigments. The solvents can prove to be harmful more than the pigments. It is because the pigment stays at the upper layer of your skin, unlike the solvents that penetrate deep inside your skin area and cause harm. 

Generally, with 90% of the research, we can say that getting ink written on your skin, or by any chance, if you ate it or mistakenly let the ink transferred to your eye, its harmful side effects are very less. There is no research made yet to prove 100% that it can lead to skin cancer. But, yes, in the tattoo ink cases, the unhygienic environment where you are getting tattooed can lead to poisonous substances in your skin rather than the ink itself. 

What are the possible symptoms of pen's ink-related poisoning? 

The symptoms of ink poisoning are quite unclear yet with the following possible symptoms you can detect whether or not you are a victim of it -

• You might feel that you gradually have the stained skin texture 
• The sour or dry tongue is another symptom of pen ink poisoning
• Although it hardly happens, yet very rare cases can have the mild stomach ache that's curable over time.

Roughness or scraped skin in the area where you have used ink. There can be many other unseen and undetected symptoms of ink poisoning or skin cancer due to it. Researchers are working hard to come forward with these new prevailing dangerous signs. 

Final Key Takeaways

The ink of the pen is not powerful enough to cause skin cancer. They are toxic in a very minimum amount. Various scams and fake news gets rumored over online platforms that create fear among the people. But, in reality, they aren't capable enough of causing skin cancer issues in normal cases.

However, large exposure of your skin cells to the ink in huge amounts can lead to further skin complications. If not treated within the timeframe, it can lead to skin cancer after years but yet there isn't any evidence to prove this statement.

So, kindly make sure to stay away from the toxic habits of writing with pen or markers over your hand and using the same uncleaned hand for eating. You should maintain hygiene & stay safe from the wave of skin cancer-causing activities. 

You can further read this article to understand the causes of skin cancer.

References
http://owlschicago.com/can-markers-cause-skin-cancer/