Tattoos and risk of cutaneous melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer in France

Researchers from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and partner institutions exploring the relationship between tattooing exposure and subsequent skin cancer diagnosis have found no association between simply having a tattoo and developing skin cancer. However, they report a preliminary finding that people with the largest area of skin covered with a tattoo had a lower risk of skin cancer that people without a tattoo. The article was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The study reports retrospectively recorded skin cancer cases from the Cancer Risk Attributable to the Body Art of Tattooing (CRABAT) study, which is led by IARC and is nested within the French national Constances cohort, including about 13 000 tattooed participants and about 100 000 non-tattooed participants. About 1800 cases of skin cancer were recorded in 2007–2021, and incidence percentages were higher in the non-tattooed participants than in the tattooed participants. No association was found between binary tattoo exposure (yes/no) and any skin cancer type. In the highest exposure category of tattooed body surface (> 2 hand palms), only 2 skin cancer cases were observed among 1633 participants (0.1%), yielding an odds ratio of 0.21 for overall skin cancer compared with people with no tattoos; however, the corresponding retrospective cohort analysis was not statistically significant.

The inverse association in the highest exposure category is based on very few participants with skin cancer and should be interpreted with caution. Further prospective studies with larger numbers of participants that developed cancer and more detailed exposure assessment are warranted. Toxicological analyses regularly identify substances classified as carcinogenic to humans by the IARC Monographs programme in tattoo inks. However, it remains unknown whether tattooing could cause cancer in humans. During the past decades, tattooing has become increasingly popular. In industrialized countries, up to 40% of people aged 30–40 years report having at least one tattoo.

Mo T, Zins M, Goldberg M, Ribet C, Kab S, Schreiver I, et al.
Tattoos and risk of cutaneous melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer in France
J Natl Cancer Inst. Published online 19 November 2025;
https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djaf332

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