That temporary henna tattoo may leave a longer-lasting physical effect than you had hoped for, and it may not be pretty, the Food and Drug Administration said Monday.
That’s because an extra ingredient included in the longer-lasting “black henna” tattoos in wide use today — hair dye including p-phenylenediamine, or PPD — can cause nasty allergic reactions in some people, including redness, blisters, oozing lesions, increased sensitivity to sunlight and permanent scarring. Reactions can occur right after a tattoo is applied to the surface of the skin or can appear up to two or three weeks later, the FDA reported.
Henna is a reddish-brown pigment that comes from the flowering plant Lawsonia inermis, which is native to tropical and subtropical regions of Africa and Asia. People have used natural henna as a cosmetic and a dye for hair and fabrics for thousands of years. But so-called black henna, often used in tourist destinations and other specialty shops, is a different product and may not include natural henna at all. A key ingredient in the temporary tattoos is dye containing PPD, the same stuff used to color hair, to make the embellishments darker and longer-lasting.
Though the FDA consumer alert dealt with tattoos, PPD also causes allergic reactions elsewhere. A growing number of people, including me, break out in itchy welts when they color their hair with PPD-containing dyes. In my experience, this includes pretty much any product that effectively covers gray, even those advertised as "natural."