What Are the Risks?

If done in a clean and professional shop, the risks are minimal. It’s up to you to find a good shop and to follow their aftercare advice.

The biggest risk in getting pierced is irritation and infection. This can happen for several reasons:

• Dirty equipment. This is why it is so important to find a clean shop that has an autoclave and ultrasonic and professional piercers who open all of their tools in front of you so that you see it coming out of sterile packaging.
• Bad aftercare. If you ignore the aftercare instructions and get it dirty, touch it and play with it all the time, get make-up in it, or change it too early, it can become irritated or infected.
• Sharing jewelry. Even if you have given it a good cleaning, there are likely still pathogens on the jewelry that you are about to insert into your body. Gross. And dangerous.
• Using a piercing gun. Because their casing is plastic, they cannot be sterilized (sterilization requires extreme heat — the guns would melt), which means that any pathogens that shot into the gun from the client before you are still on it when you get pierced. Even if the gun is single-use, the dull jewelry that gets shot through your ear or nose causes far more trauma to your skin than the sharp point of a needle, which can make you more susceptible to irritation.

The other main risk is rejection, which is when your body decides it doesn’t like being pierced and starts pushing the jewelry out. This isn’t particularly painful, but it can leave a nasty scar. If you think your piercing is migrating, have your piercer check it out. If it is rejecting, take it out immediately to avoid scarring. You can always try again once it’s healed.