Always wanted a tattoo but are afraid that you may regret it? Hey – don’t fret it. It’s a real worry.

Body art is a $1.5-billion a year industry, with one in four adults age 18 to 50 sporting one or more tattoos. About 17 percent of them would like to remove a tattoo, according to the American Academy of Dermatology.

Now the good news – Freedom2ink has developed a biodegradeable tattoo ink that is easier to remove than traditional inks of the past.

Freedom-2™ has been especially developed for less painful, lower cost tattoo removal. Traditionally, the removal of tattoos was a painful, slow expensive process, that, unfortunately left a pretty ugly scar. With the American company’s new ink, it takes just one laser treatment, instead of the traditional 12 sessions that most tattoos require, to remove a tattoo.

How tattoo removal with Freedom 2 works

Freedom-2 ink is made of biodegradable safe dyes that can be easily absorbed by the body. This would normally be a bad thing for a tattoo, but what the engineers at Freedom 2 did were is coat each bead of dye in plastic. The plastic keeps the dye from being absorbed by the body. If you ever want the tattoo removed, laser treatment will break open the plastic capsules, and your body will reabsorb the non-toxic dye.

The erasable inks may even hold up better over time than the old permanent inks, as they also standardized the diameter of the plastic beads, which creates a more stable image that won’t blur over the years.

This is great news, as the rise of popularity in tattoo art in the US shows no signs of slowing down.

Before and after tattoo removal

Putting his money where his mouth is, here’s a “before and after photo” of Martin Schmieg, president and CEO of Freedom-2™,Inc. with one of the first ever Freedom-2™ tattoos, and what it looks like after laser removal.

Freedom-2′s removable tattoo ink, now branded as InfinitInk, is scheduled to hit tattoo parlors in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, New York City, Miami, Phoenix, and Seattle this year, and will be used by artists at about 20 parlors throughout the seven cities.

The new removable tattoo ink is getting lots of awards and mentions:

• Time Magazines Best Inventions of 2007
• CNN’s Next Little Thing investor’s pick
• New York Magazine’s “The Everything Guide to Tattoos”