QuietDragon
Posts: 47
Joined: 12/6/2005 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: desertdancer I have an alergy to gold.. I love looking at it, but I can't wear it for more then a couple of hours, I get a rash and sometimes swelling. I can however wear white gold. Silver has always been my favorite metal through so I'm ok going without the gold. Hi desertdancer, Respectfully, I'd suggest that you don't actually have an allergy to gold, but rather the nickel content of the particular gold items/jewellery you have been wearing in the past. The key issue is that you mentioned that you could wear "white gold" without problem. "White gold" is simply gold with a different mix of alloying metals, and is subject to the same carat scale as other gold alloy products (percentage of gold in 24 parts). 18 carat American white gold is typically 75% gold, 14.5% nickel, 5.5% copper and 5% zinc. 18 carat European white gold is typically 75% gold, 17% palladium, 4% copper and 4% silver. (This said, there are various other alloy ratios for white gold, including manganese, chromium, iron, silver, zinc, cobolt and copper.) Palladium is considerably more expensive than other gold whitening agents, but is generally considered to be hypoallergenic, much as platinum is (as platinum and palladium form part of the same element family in the Periodic Table). "European white gold" is nickel free (or contains extremely small proportions of nickel) because of European Community Regulations (the EC Nickel Directive) brought about because of nickel's dematological and carcinogenic properties. If you are buying jewellery from a reputable jewellers, you should be able to get metallurgical data on the jewellery you are prospectively purchasing. And if buying ear-rings, get assurance that the ear bar is not of an inferior or different alloy than the stud. Hope this helps.
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"Most welcome, bondage, for thou art a way, I think, to liberty." Cymbeline, Act V, Scene 4 - William Shakespeare
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