Full disclosure: I have a lip ring. I've had it for ten or eleven years now, and I didn't get it on a whim - I got it after considering the idea and wanting one for about 7 years. I also have multiple earrings in each ear; those were not quite so carefully considered but I love them nonetheless. So when it came to the prospect of piercing my daughter's ears, I approached the matter with a bit more scrutiny than some. To me, ear piercing is not just a possible rite of passage; it's a matter of health, hygiene, and quasi-permanent body modification. (Even if ear piercings are allowed to close, there is a permanent effect.) That's serious stuff to expose a five-year-old to, but that's just what we did last month when we let our daughter Z get her ears pierced.

We've written about how Zella came to the personal decision to get her ears pierced, why we let her do it, and how she confronted and overcame her fears over on The Tranquil Parent. I'll include a direct link to the post at the end of this one. Here on Z Recommends, I'd like to explain why we chose to go this route and how we made it happen.

Finding a studio

I knew from the previous conversations with our local piercing studio that they wouldn't pierce children's ears under the age of 12, so I looked up some places in Houston, the nearest big city. I found three places that were members of the Association of Professional Piercers, an organization of piercers who scrupulously follow legal as well as voluntary standards of body piercing best practices, including piercing procedures and sterilization of tools. I called all three, and one of them was willing to pierce our five-year-old daughter's ears, provided we sign a consent form.

So why did we choose to take her to a piercing salon instead of taking her to the mall or another place that uses a piercing gun?

The trouble with piercing guns

Make no mistake: We are thrilled to hear about any child's successful piercing experience, and in that sense we don't care whether it was done at a piercing studio or a mall kiosk. We know many parents appreciate the convenience and affordability of gun piercing, and we don't blame them. But there are risks as well as drawbacks to the use of piercing guns to pierce ears. Here are the biggies:

Cleanliness and sterilization. The gun's plastic parts can be wiped down but not completely sterilized (that requires high heat, which plastic can't take). Internal parts that cannot be removed cannot be cleaned at all without expensive equipment virtually no one using a gun will have. The blunt force trauma required to puncture an earlobe with a piercing stud (see below) causes a microspray of plasma and blood that can get on these internal parts and pass bloodborne pathogens on to subsequent customers. These tools are not properly autoclaved the way they would be required to be anywhere else the skin was being penetrated (doctor's office, hospital, or piercing studio).

At a reputable piercing studio, all instruments are sterilized with an autoclave (the same thing they use to sterilize tools in hospitals). Where we got Z's ears pierced, the piercer wore gloves to get out her equipment and then put a pair of sterile gloves on top of her other gloves. They were so sanitary that I never felt like by piercing Z's ears we were running the risk of exposing her to blood-borne diseases. Here's the APP's take on the matter:

It is the position of the Association of Professional Piercers that only sterile disposable equipment is suitable for body piercing, and that only materials which are certified as safe for internal implant should be placed in inside a fresh or unhealed piercing. We consider unsafe any procedure that places vulnerable tissue in contact with either non-sterile equipment or jewelry that is not considered medically safe for long-term internal wear. Such procedures place the health of recipients at an unacceptable risk. [Link]

Regulatory oversight. In Texas, where we live, piercing studios - places that pierce any body parts beyond earlobes - are required by the State of Texas to be regulated by the Department of Health. This means (among other things) that state inspectors are monitoring the studio to insuring that "the artist practices universal precautions to prevent the spread of infection, such as... uses instruments that are either disposable or that are routinely sterilized." It also means that those who pierce ears with piercing guns are not regulated by the Department of Health. Period. I have no idea why places that pierce only ear lobes are not subject to the same requirements and health inspections - infection can enter an ear lobe just as easily as it can a belly button - but they aren't. Would you go to a restaurant that wasn't inspected by the Health Department because they only served cold sandwiches?

Training. Many piercing gun users are trained by DVD and instruction manual. Many perform piercings infrequently. Many do not do it many times before they have moved on to a new service sector job. Professional piercers go through classes or an extended apprenticeship, typically under highly experienced piercers, and they stay in the profession a long time. Look at it this way: At a mall jewelry shop, ear piercings are the most difficult and challenging task an employee will perform. At a piercing studio, they are the easiest.

Proper piercing produces quality results. Piercing studios pierce with a sharp, hollow needle which makes a clean hole in the ear. A piercing gun uses a blunt earring and the force of the gun to puncture the ear lobe, causing the skin to tear rather than pierce cleanly. Piercing guns position earrings with less precision, often leading to higher or lower positioning than desired and mismatched piercings.

The consequences of poorly performed and non-sterile piercings can be serious. Infections from piercing guns are not tracked by the industry and are certainly underreported (no Department of Health oversight, remember?) but can range from minor infections to persistent lumps in the earlobes to needing to have an earring surgically removed.

Conclusions

If we'd gone with the cheapest earrings at the mall, we could have gotten Zella's ears pierced for about $20. Instead, between the professional piercer and the stainless steel stud earrings she put in, we spent about $100. Like many things in life, there is a pretty big price gap between convenience and quality.

Though at some points it was one of those decisions which, because of the added expense and difficulty in finding a place that would pierce a five-year-old's ears, caused me to start I questioning my sanity (Am I researching too much, making things too difficult for myself?) in hindsight I'm thrilled that we stuck to our needle (I couldn't say we stuck to our guns!) and found a way to make it work. Zella's piercings are beautiful, perfect round holes. Two weeks in, they already looked almost completely healed; it has been a month now with no problems, and although our daily cleanings of the piercings are part of the reason, I firmly believe the proper piercing method provided the best foundation.

Again, we have no interest in judging or criticizing anyone who has gone the route of the mall piercing gun, and if the experience worked out for you, that's wonderful. But if your child's ears are not yet pierced, we encourage you to seriously consider using a professional piercer.

On TTP: The story of Zella's piercing

"What may look like melodrama to the jaded initiate is, for those at the threshold, simply drama. And for my money, the ability to willingly withstand pain is the most profound threshold of fear a young child can overcome." You can read Jeremiah's personal, politics-free account of our five-year-old's challenging piercing experience on The Tranquil Parent.

Last week, the CPSC announced the recall of a children's book published by St. Martin's Press that included a piece of vinyl that contained dangerous levels of lead. While the recall was the first in what will likely be a long list of novelty children's books coming under CPSC scrutiny for their incorporation of sketchy plastics, what really caught our eye about it was a note in the recall notice that indicated that the CPSC had been alerted to the product's lead levels by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG). Digging deeper, we discovered that US PIRG had reported their findings in a report published on November 24, 2009 - a full month and a half before the recall was announced.

Meanwhile, Target is continuing to "investigate" the Green Baby onesie ZRecs, in collaboration with the Center for Environmental Health, identified in November as containing nearly four times the legal limit of lead in its tagless label - putting it in direct contact with a baby's skin. The California Attorney General notified Target of the finding and Target stopped selling it while promising to investigate the matter themselves. (The Washington Post, in an otherwise excellent article on "citizen regulators," erroneously stated that Target had recalled the onesie. The Post ran a correction this week.) Target representative Beth Hanson confirmed in an email to us a week ago:

• Upon receiving the information from the California Attorney General's office about this product, Target issued a voluntary market withdrawal. This product has been removed from sale in our stores and we continue to investigate the issue.


• Once a market withdrawal has been issued, we hard lock all items at the point of sale. A “hard lock” means that should a guest attempt to purchase a withdrawn product while we are in the process of removing it from the sales floor, the product will flag our cashiers with a “do not sell” message at the register.


• It is important for all of our guests to know that Target is committed to providing high quality and safe products. We realize that product safety is top of mind for our guests. We continue to partner with our vendors to ensure that the best products are in our stores and online at Target.com.


• Since this is an ongoing investigation about this particular product, we are unable to provide further specifics.


• Guests who have purchased the withdrawn product can return it to any Target store for a full refund.

We inquired further regarding the timeline such an investigation might take, and Hanson declined to provide any estimate or any additional information about Target's review process. But it's hard, on its face, to accept that it should take this long for an issue like this to be resolved. The longer a company like Target waits, the greater the distance between purchase and notification, the greater the exposure children face, and the fewer returns the company is likely to get when the product is ultimately (presumably) recalled. The disincentives to conduct a timely recall are real and obvious.

The CPSC is also looking into this case and we are confident it will be resolved eventually. But how long can a company like Target make consumers wait before they cast even greater doubt on the commitment to safety the company claims to set as such a high priority?

More on onesie hazards to come.