Surgical steel, often used in earring wires and advertised as hypo-allergenic, is NOT nickel free, usually containing 8% nickel. People with a slight nickel allergy may tolerate surgical steel earrings for a few hours or maybe even all day. But they may be so sensitive that even the buttons of their jeans cannot touch their skin.
Oh yeah. And the amount of nickel varies a LOT by brand. Most Gap jeans I can wear without tucking in my shirt. Levis have me scratching a hole through my stomach within hours. And earrings? Forget about it. My current watch is the only one I've ever been able to tolerate with any metal on it, anywhere -- normally even the clasp makes me break out. (Stainless steel. Gotta love it.)
I bet you guys have people saying, "Oh, no. You can't be allergic to that." It's those people who tell me, "Oh, this wool's so soft. It can't bother you."
I once had a dog who was allergic to metal. She got these horrible sores on her neck and one vet just kept giving us ointment to put on them. Finally we took her to another vet who said, "Take off her collar. She's allergic to metal. It's actually pretty common." At that point the sores were so bad he had to shave off all the fur on her head to treat them, which in a large very furry dog looks really funny.
Melts back into thread.
Sweet Jesus. You were right. You were all right. LiltyNBathBombs4EVAH. I smell like yummy (Sweet orange and cognac, I think). And feel pretty. And there were little stars and silvery confetti, but I'm guessing that still doesn't make it the glitter one.
Is it normal to immediatly crave more and to want to go order them all right now so you can try each and every one? Am I going to need a 12 Step?
Melts out of thread.
I knew I was allergic to nickel, but I didn't have a clue it was in surgical steel.
My allergy seems to be mostly okay with surface contact, which is probably why I never noticed a correlation. I don't wear watches, and though I knew I had massive earring allergies, I somehow didn't connect that to surgical steel. I guess I assumed that my reaction was to "cheap" metals and assumed all the "hypo-allergenic" brands were actually surgical steel.
I put in a new belly ring a few days ago and have slowly developed a NASTY reaction, but since I had only recently gotten it re-stretched and had gone up a gauge, I wrote it off as a temporary reaction. Today, it finally occurred to me to google "surgical steel" and "allergy". DOH.
I now have ordered shiny new nickel-free belly jewellery from the UK, but I
just
ordered a bunch of pretty surgical steel things a few days ago. Argh. I'm hoping if they are completely unopened, I can still return them. Otherwise, Cass, they're yours.
I bet you guys have people saying, "Oh, no. You can't be allergic to that."
Oh, you bet. Because nickel is in so many "hypoallergenic" alloys, ergo I can't be reacting to that.
Necklaces are tricky too, because even if the chain is 14K gold, the clasp will most likely have nickel in it.
Is it normal to immediatly crave more and to want to go order them all right now so you can try each and every one?
Yes.
Am I going to need a 12 Step?
Yes.
Step 1. We admitted that were were powerless over Lush products and even the shipping fees wouldn't keep us from them. Because we were not allowed to do our jobs from the bathtub, our lives became unmanageable.
(Ah, the inevitable Lush crosspost)
Necklaces are tricky too, because even if the chain is 14K gold, the clasp will most likely have nickel in it.
If it's white gold, the chain and clasp will both have nickel in them, usually about 12% for 14k. Yellow gold uses copper and silver as alloys.
Thankfully, there's a move afoot (esp. in the EU) to use alternatives to nickel for white gold. (Though palladium alloyed gold is more expensive.)
Cereal to add that a lot of white gold is rhodium plated to make it whiter, and the clasp, being the part that would hit the neck the most, would probably be the first part where the plating starts to wear off, which would explain noticing a problem with clasps before chains.
I prefer my bathbombs glitter-free, because I hate cleaning the tub. And while being sparkly may be pretty, I hate having bits stuck to my skin.
I might need to track down the bath bomb recipe so I can make them to my own finicky standards.
