Giving your local Board of Health regs a revamp

[MrBruce]

Sometimes the local BOH has regulations that are quite old & somewhat outdated in scope.....

In the case of my local BOH here in MA it's borderline frustrating. Keep in mind the 38 yr ban on tattooing was just lifted in 2001, so most cities and town have just adopted regs from other states where it's been legal, and or made up a few regs of their own...

To amplify the rigidity, since MA is a Commonwealth each city...town or county has the ability to not only regulate separately but can also STILL make tattooing illegal...

So...that brings us to my question.......

Has anyone taken steps in their area to rewrite or revamp shop regulations? Examples being square footage for stations....wall color in stations....floor plans....hours....etc????

I'd like to hear from those who have , and what tips they may share....... a couple shops in my area have been discussing approaching this...... I'd like to think it thru before I poke the bear................because I hate pissed off bears.

[cltattooing]

Pardon my ignorance, but what does the wall color of your station have to do with anything at all?

[MrBruce]

Pardon my ignorance, but what does the wall color of your station have to do with anything at all?

My sentiment exactly.......

My local BOH regs state walls must be of light color.

My guess is they feel a brighter, lighter area will be less likely to hide biohazard material splatter..and also must be sanitize able 36" from floor level...

This is probably some sort of OSHA reg from Food service areas...made to adapt into tattoo shops..

Like I said, they adopted a lot of outside information into the local regs...it's insane.

I'm preparing certain change proposals for next year...along with a couple local guys.....hopefully if all our ducks are in a row we can make the changes without screwing ourselves with these people.

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To illustrate further the out dated regs we have...

We originally had beautiful pressed tin ceilings in the entire shop. They had a great vintage feel..and actually had to be dry walled over because the BOH felt the ceiling should be free of texture to prevent bacterial growth....lol....unreal....

One of the changes we will address...hopefully