The 'hall of shame' when it comes to climate change culprits is a long one: Cars, planes, power stations and now...tattoo removal clinics? Bafflingly enough, the process used to erase ill-advised and unwanted tattoos from people's skins has been deemed 'bad for the environment', and has led to a new method being devised that does not cause pollution. Who knew!?
[Via New Scientist]
I've never had to undergo this particular procedure myself, but a quick bit of googling reveals that to remove a tat, cosmetic surgeons have to cool down the skin to around 3 °C, as the next bit involves blasting it with radiation that heats the skin to potentially damaging temperatures as it zaps away the ink. To achive this cooking, a substance called tetrafluoroethane is applied -- but this has been 'outed' as a greenhouse gas, many times more noxious to the atmosphere than C02. The solution? A new skin-cooling substance has been invented, which is less polluting and is in fact made from our old friend C02. The real message: think carefully before you get that image tweety-pie scrawled on to your butt-cheeks!
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