ANDERSON — For the second time this year, the Madison County Health Department is seeking to tighten the requirements of the county’s tattoo ordinance.
Rebecca Sanders, infectious disease coordinator for the Health Department, informed the Madison County Board of Health on June 13 that the department wants to prohibit certain practices.
The practices being considered for prohibiting include branding, cutting, dermal puncture, scarification, implantation, skin peeling and tongue splitting.
“This is extreme body modification,” Sanders said.
The Health Department also wants to change the appeal process when a person is denied a license and to offer temporary licenses for visiting tattoo artists.
“The appeal process is not working,” Sanders said. “When we deny an application they can request a hearing before the Board of Health within 15 days.”
Currently an appeal can be filed with the Madison County commissioners.
The change would provide for first an administrative decision by the Health Department and then an appeal to the Board of Health.
“Other counties use the same procedure,” Sanders said.
Sanders said there is still work to complete on the local tattoo ordinance.
She said there are seven licensed tattoo parlors in Madison County and the Health Department does a minimum of four inspections per year.
Earlier this year, the county commissioners approved an amendment to the county’s tattoo ordinance that has been in effect since 2004.
The change eliminated the disqualifiers for a license of being convicted of a felony in the past five years, conviction in the past 10 years and the applicant defined as a serious violent felon and conviction on more than one felony.
The ordinance still disqualifies an applicant for having a conviction that places an applicant on the sex or violent offender registry or for submitting false information on a license application.
The issue was raised at an earlier Board of Health meeting when a license application was denied based on the existing ordinance.
Another ordinance change mirrors the Allen County ordinance that someone wishing to obtain a license must provide documentation that they completed, was offered or declined the hepatitis B vaccination.