['Tattooing has recently become increasingly popular. Using tiny needles, tattooists place the tattoo ink in the dermis along with numerous unknown ingredients. Most tattoos consist of black inks, which are predominantly composed of soot products (carbon black with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons).', 'Black tattoos cause skin problems, including allergic reactions, but the responsible substance frequently remains unknown.', 'We applied gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry analysis to search for hazardous compounds in 14 different commercially available black tattoo ink samples.', 'The analysis revealed that all inks contained the softener substance dibutyl phthalate (0.12-691.2 µg/g). Some of the inks contained hexachloro-1,3-butadiene (0.08-4.52 µg/g), metheneamine (0.08-21.64 µg/g), dibenzofuran (0.02-1.62 µg/g), benzophenone (0.26-556.66 µg/g), and 9-fluorenone (0.04-3.04 µg/g).'] Are black tattoo inks a source of problematic substances such as dibutyl phthalate?