Tattoos are increasingly common in industrialised countries.1 Forty percent of young adults in the United States2 and approximately 1 in 4 young adults in Australia have at least one tattoo.3 Tattoos are also frequently evident among elite athletes. In 2017, a widely publicized paper by Luetkemeier et al.4 reported that tattoos potentially impair local sweating, which taken at face value implies an elevated heat stress risk. The postulated mechanism is that the tattooing process (repeated needle insertion and deposition of ink into the dermal layer) has the potential to interfere with sweat gland function.

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