The Ontario government will ban the practices of eyeball tattooing and implanting eye jewellery. Eye Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (EPSO) pushed for action to prevent these dangerous procedures and got the Ontario government to modify an health care bill. This bill that went through legislature – Bill 160 – now includes that only regulated health professionals are allowed to preform any of these eye altering procedures.
This is finally being implemented into Bill 160 after 2 months when Catt Gallinger story of a botched eyeball tattoo went viral. Within 24 hours of the procedure , she was in severe pain, her eye had swollen shut and she experienced blurred vision. Since then, she’s undergone multiple treatments in an effort to reduce swelling and restore her eyesight. Gallinger regrets her decision everyday. “I have my moments where I’m like, “Just cut it out and be done with it.”‘
The procedure called Scleral pigmentation,otherwise known as eye tattooing, is made by lancing a small needle into the top layer of the eye and injecting diluted coloured ink. It is supposed to be a regulated surgical procedure carried out by an ophthalmologist. Unfortunately, most of these procedures are done by tattoo artists who are not nearly qualified to alter the eye in any way.
So far Ontario is the only province to make a stance against eye tattooing. EPSO hopes other provinces follow Ontario’s lead and that banning these procedures helps avoid what happened to Catt Gallinger happen to others.
