Reducing the cost of pigment production
And why is black iron oxide even used in the modern production of tattoo inks and permanent makeup (PMU) pigments?
Simply because it’s ultra-cheap!
Black iron oxide pigment exists in two forms:
- Natural raw material (that very mineral, ferromagnetic metal, straight from the quarry)
- Synthetic raw material (grown in a laboratory and produced in a factory)
What determines the price of black oxide
The prices for black iron oxide are determined by their origin:
Natural is always cheaper and worse because it’s dirtier. Laboratory tests of the raw material can reveal a variety of heavy metals: lead, mercury, etc. Does the Chinese supplier clean their pigment of all this? Probably not. Remember, no one produces dry pigments for them to be implanted under the skin.
Synthetic is always more expensive because it's more complex. But it's still cheaper than Carbon Black. How much cleaner is synthetic than natural? Definitely cleaner, but it depends on the quality control of this iron oxide for accompanying impurities.
The summary here is simple: if the black iron oxide pigment is made from crap, then you can find all sorts of things in it.
If the pigment is produced with proper quality control, it may be of higher quality, but it's still questionable. These are Chinese products, after all.
But, based on our experience, we strongly doubt that any of the ink manufacturers we know would bother with such control. To prove that the pigments are pure, one would need to spend a lot of money.
Which of those who like using cheap black iron oxide to make their inks will spend thousands of dollars on researching their own inks? Definitely no one.
What does the BROVI company produce PMU pigments from?
So what do we do at BROVI?
We make ink based on Carbon Black purified from benzopyrene which is 50% less concentrated. A simple chemical reaction purifies it, and we get a pigment with a purity of over 99%.
And it gives you a reason to think about how pure your inorganic inks based on black oxide really are.
