Clean Practices for Body Piercing

These are practices which, to the best of our knowledge, are the current “Best Practice” for the field.  Please do your homework before you get any piercing done.

  1. Clean hands are donned with single-use latex, nitrile, or vinyl gloves.
  2. The skin is disinfected using a betadine solution dispensed from a bottle into a disposable ink-cap.  This is applied to skin with a clean cotton swab.  All disposables are used. Read More
  3. Marking the skin is done by using a gentian violet dye in an ink-cap; by dipping into this with a toothpick, the mark may be made without use of pens.
  4. For facial and oral piercings, interior facial suraces are cleansed by having client rinse the mouth with antiseptic mouthwash, external surfaces are cleansed using the betadine solution.
  5. All piercings are accomplished using new, sterilized, hollow piercing needles and receiving tubes – instead of corks.
  6. Immediately following the piercing, the needle is disposed of in an approved sharps container.
  7. Forceps, Receiving tubes and insertion tapers are all both disinfected using a high-level solution, and are auto-clave sterilized before use.
  8. Jewelry and ring-opening and ring-closing pliers are also autoclave sterilized before use.
  9. All piercing is done with jewelry made of an appropriate material.  Implant grade, surgical stainless steel is the metal most often used in our piercing practice.
  10. Any jewelry brought in by a client is considered suspect; rare cases where the make and material can be confirmed may allow it to be used in initial piercing.  Change-over in a healed piercing allows for more variance in material.