Posted: Aug 22, 2008, 8:47 AM CST
When beauty becomes agony
woman's skin swelled and blistered after getting a black henna tattoo at a wedding,
Debbe Geiger has never been one for tattoos. But when her daughter Kim begged to get a henna tattoo on a family vacation to Cancun a few years ago, she thought it couldn’t hurt. After all, it’s only temporary, and Kim would have something to show off to her friends back home.
But just two days later, the tattoo of a cute little bug had swelled into an itchy, bubbling blister
The American Academy of Dermatology recently issued a warning that a chemical found in black henna tattoos can cause a severe allergic reaction, causing the skin to redden, swell and blister — but only where the henna is applied, leaving people with bubbly blisters in shapes like suns, stars and flowers.
As henna body art has become mainstream in the last few years, often peddled at summer carnivals and concerts, dermatologists report increasingly treating patients, especially teen girls and young women, with these often elaborate looking allergic reactions.
“Just because they’re temporary, people think they’re safe,” says Dr. Sharon E. Jacob, a dermatologist at the University of California, San Diego.
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