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Tuesday  Feb 21, 2006

Beyond the Basics: The Autoclave

Veteran tattoo aficionados know the importance of an autoclave to the tattoo process. If you do not, the autoclave is the instrument that sterilizes all of the non-disposable instruments in the tattooing process.

It is very important to check and make sure that your tattoo studio is using an autoclave and that the results are tested regularly. For best performance, the autoclave should reach a temperature of 250F for a minimum of thirty minutes.

Is this enough? According to tattoodles.com, there is a safety check that would be an excellent addition to the standard process: a control spore strip.

Ideally, the results of the autoclave are sent into a lab on a regular basis, and the lab cultures the results to see if there are any remaining microbes. In addition to this, a tattoo studio can also get spore strips, which are strips that contain spores that are harder to destroy than blood-born pathogens. If the autoclave gets a clean bill of health after the spore test, it is in good working order.

Since many studios buy their autoclaves used or over the Internet, the spore test would be a good first step for every studio before using the autoclave for active sterilization.

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