Up to 90% of tattoo inks in US may be mislabeled, chemistry researchers find in survey
Tattoo ink ingredients don't always match what's labeled on the bottle.
John Swierk
Assistant Professor, Chemistry, Binghamton University, State University of New York
The Swierk group is broadly interested in understanding and controlling radical reactions initiated by single electron transfer, most often via photo- or electrochemistry. Use of spectroscopic and electroanalytical methods is central to much of the research in the group. One major area of emphasis within the group deals with understanding photoredox reactions. This class of reactions is transforming modern synthetic chemistry by substituting hard-to-handle, expensive and toxic reagents (e.g., HSnBu3) with short-lived excited states that can themselves be potent oxidants or reductants. Challenging bond-forming reactions can be accessed with this chemistry and, often, a variety of functional groups can be tolerated. Despite the promise of photoredox methods, a mechanistic understanding is lacking. Using a variety of experimental approaches and kinetic modeling, the Swierk group seeks to completely characterize photoredox catalytic cycles and identify the kinetically limiting steps, with an eye towards informing the design of new reactions.
