Tattoo inks are composed of various insoluble organic, organometallic, and/or inorganic pigments dispersed in water, alcohol, glycerin, and other components. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers the pigments used in tattoo inks to be color additives and therefore subject to pre-approval by FDA prior to their use in FDA-regulated products. However, no pigments have been approved for injection into the skin for cosmetic purposes. To better understand tattoo inks, we previously described a qualitative high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with photodiode array (PDA) detection, in which the analytes are identified by their retention times and UV-visible (UV-Vis) spectra. Due to the complexity and variation of tattoo ink matrixes, we have modified our qualitative method by adding detection by mass spectrometry (MS) to confirm the pigment identities and by changing to ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC). We used our new UPLC-PDA-MS method to identify various organic pigments in tattoo inks. The pigments were extracted from tattoo inks with dimethylformamide, isolated from the insoluble components by centrifugation, and separated by gradient elution. For MS detection, the pigments were ionized by electrospray ionization in the positive mode. UV-Vis and MS libraries of organic pigments from multiple commercial sources were created and applied to the identification of pigments in a survey of tattoo inks from various manufacturers.

Identification of organic pigments in tattoo inks by liquid chromatography with photodiode array and mass spectrometry detection

254th National Meeting (2017)

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