Tattoos Increase Risk of Developing Lymphoma by 21%, New Study Finds

Question

This claim is TRUE:

The original article was published on the People Magazine website. It got its data from a study by Lund University in Sweden. When you search for “Lymphoma”, “Tattoo”, and “Lund University”, an article on the university’s website appears. The website is officially affiliated with a real university, and the information aligns with that in the People article.

With evidence, I believe that the claim is true, due to the reliability of the source and the original article not altering the data or making outlandish claims. 

Answer 1

People Magazine published this article making the claim that, "Getting a tattoo, regardless of size, increases the risk of developing lymphoma by 21%, according to a new study." The study in which this supposed information was received comes from sciencedirect.com which is not a government source and has been known to make some mistakes in their articles. However, overall this site is more reliable. 

The obvious misinformation here comes from People Magazine's mistranslation of the information derived from the ScienceDirect article. In the scientific findings, the number 21% comes from the number of people in the experiment who had tattoos. The author of this People Magazine article takes this 21% and labels it as how much more likely an individual with tattoos is to develop lymphoma cancer. Based on the numbers given by the report, it seems like individuals with tattoos are 3% more likely to develop lymphoma.

The final interpretation does not claim how much more likely someone with tattoos is to develop lymphoma cancer, rather, it simply claims that there appears to be a correlation of the two. The article even claims that it is not definite and that further research and experiments are needed. 

Overall, the information provided from the science journal was misinterpreted and therefore, the claim is actually false. Overall I would categorize this claim as exaggerated and misleading, as there appears to be some truth in it.

People Magazine article: https://people.com/tattoos-increase-risk-of-developing-lymphoma-by-21-new-study-finds-8654298

Science Direct Article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589537024002281

Answer 2

This claim is true and the article gets this claim from sciencedirect.com. The original source of the information is pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Comments

Can you elaborate? A strong fact-check provides relevant data, quotes, and contextual information as well as direct source links.

Answer 3

Possibly could be misleading. 

While that specific study did believe to find a cause in rise in lymphoma from tattoos, it was also an observational study and therefore couldn't chemically prove that tattoos, or what exactly about tattoos, increase chances of lymphoma (health.harvard.edu). There's also the issue that this topic has not been researched enough, so the majority of papers writing about it are repeating the evidence of this single study (sierrahemonc). The study also couldn't connect an increase in chance of lymphoma with a larger tattooed surface. However the article notes a clear increase in lymphoma cases with individuals who have undergone laser removal treatment. Yet doesn't clarify if this could be a determining factor in their statistics and not tattoos themselves.

This is definitely something to be aware of if you're getting tattoos. But it's too soon to say if this is true or not because it was the first real study of its kind (which even the article states) and there are many pieces missing as previously mentioned.

Comments

This comment has a very good breakdown of all the limitations in this study. I do think that the studies show association but not a direct cause, and I think you did a good job highlighting the lack of research. I am curious if the laser removal you mentioned was found separately and could also be a factor. Overall this is a great factcheck.