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November 4, 1999 DES MOINES, Iowa -- Do not look. This was all that was going through college student Jamie Edyvean's mind as a shimmering silver needle was inserted by hand through her naval at a local establishment in Des Moines. Body piercing establishments are not regulated in any way by the state nor do they have to be licensed before they proceed to stick needles into every part of your body. However, the Cerro Gordo County Board of Health in Iowa recently asked the county Board of Supervisors to pass an ordinance that would require the licensing of all body piercing establishments -- the first county in Iowa to make this move that would form regulations not existent at the state level. "This issue has made a lot of evolutionary progress," said Tom Reichard, service manager of the Department of Environmental Health for Cerro Gordo County. "It started at the state level with the regulating of tattooing, where there are more blood born pathogens involved. Piercing is moving slower through the state, and our county is just moving faster." There are no state licensing requirements or regulations for piercing establishments, but the state Department of Public Health does pass out standard recommendations for piercing establishments if they are connected to a tattoo parlor. If not, they are completely on their own. "Even if the piercing is a part of a tattooing place what we give them are merely recommendations," said Ralph Wilmoth, bureau chief of the state Bureau of Disease Prevention. "Our recommendations carry no weight or authority. We can't intercede. These places are totally unregulated." Edyvean, a senior at Drake University, said she was not aware piercing establishments were operating on their own without sanitary conditions being checked by either the state, city or county. "It makes me uncomfortable that we have to rely merely on the individual piercing place to make sure they're keeping their equipment and clean and to make sure theyÕre operating safely," Edyvean said. "With something that involves needles like piercing does, it would seem that it would be in the interest of the state to force places to be licensed in order to avoid any problems that could easily occur at establishments that aren't up to par." Wilmoth said that there does seem to be concern over the lack of regulation of piercing establishments, because the issue comes up in the Iowa Legislature almost every year and almost passed two years ago. Some years the bill never makes it out of committee. The state Department of Public Health doesn't typically introduce legislation, so Wilmoth said it is usually local health departments or other interested parties that lobby for this legislation. "There has just never been enough support to pass the bill," Wilmoth said. "Either the Legislature doesn't find it significant enough, or they consider it not worthwhile." The only involvement the state Department of Public Health usually has in proposing the legislation -- it doesn't take an opinion either way, because it is there to enforce regulations -- is when the parties involved ask it to submit reports detailing the health hazards behind body piercing, what the cost would be to implement such laws and if implementation is possible. Reichard said the reason Cerro Gordo County is moving on its own to regulate piercing establishments is because of the large number of phone calls it was receiving from parents concerned with the sanitary conditions of establishments and the ages of people getting pierced without parental permission. Although the primary response is to the age factor, the Cerro Gordo Department of Health added other regulations to the recommendation to the Board of Supervisors, Reichard said. If the ordinance passes, piercing establishments will have to be inspected for their physical structure, procedural elements such as hand washing and glove use, and the enforcement of age requirements, which would require parental approval if you are under the age of 18. Most counties already do tattooing inspections on their own so they don't have to pay for a state inspector -- Cerro Gordo County included -- so they will not have to make many new accommodations if this ordinance passes. Reichard said tattooing inspections would be almost identical to piercing inspections, because the equipment is so similar and most piercing establishments are already part of tattooing parlor, although not all are. Wilmoth said the only option the public has without laws regulating piercing establishments is to use the civil court system if it has a problem, although he sees more counties taking the same steps as Cerro Gordo County if its ordinance passes. "Typically what happens is others wait for someone to take that first step and wait to see if it's challenged or how it's received," Wilmoth said. "If this goes through well-received, we'll probably see others taking these same steps." |