Why don’t tattoos just go away? If it’s just staining your cells and the cells eventually die, wouldn’t it just disappear?
In: Biology
It doesn’t stain your cells. Pigment is injected into the dermis, and it’s basically just chunks of inorganic matter that has a particular color. Part of the tattoo actually breaks down as smaller fragments of pigment are removed by your white blood cells, but the bigger chunks they can’t remove and they stay. Smarter Every Day has a neat (https://youtu.be/D0B7F5UbTOQ) that shows how this works, and how a laser tattoo removal breaks down the pigment so your body can do the rest.
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