JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: Life-long reminders of a sudden impulse? Tattoos, the focus today of our new feature, "Ask CNN."</s>CINDY ADCOCK: Hello. My name is Cindy Adcock, and I'm from Woodstock, Georgia. And my question is: Why do tattoos last forever?</s>HOLLY FIRFER, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Tattoos are permanent. They will last forever if you want them to. A small needle injects ink into the skin at a rate of hundreds of vibrations a minute. That needle penetrates the top layer of the skin, called the epidermis, and ends up deeper in the skin, in the dermis. The ink particles are too large for the body's seek-and-destroy white cells to remove. And the dermis is very stable, so the ink will last your entire life. You might see a bit of fading as time goes on, but to remove a tattoo completely, you need to either have a chemical peel, a skin graft, or a laser procedure, which can take years to dissolve a drawing.
Ask CNN: Why Do Tattoos Last Forever?