I had a friend volunteer to wear a pair of Argentium® Sterling earrings for me. She has only been able to wear high karat gold. Any gold under 18 karat would cause redness and swelling in her ears. She was also not able to wear Sterling Silver. Wearing Sterling Silver would result in redness and swelling in only an hour or two. Often this would result in infections.
My friend wore the earrings for over a week with no ill affects. She liked them so much she asked me to make her some more.
After the earrings were created, I put them in the oven at 250 deg. Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. I did this to attempt to raise the germanium oxide on the surface of the earrings. After the earrings were taken from the oven, I sterilized them with alcohol.
This test was by no means conclusive, however it was a very positive result for this one person. I am looking forward to doing more testing.
3 comments:
Hi Marty, just wanted to say that my experiences with the non-reactivity of Argentium Sterling is very similar to yours. I too have made earrings for a woman who cannot wear regular sterling (or anything less than 18k gold) and she loves the AS! At one point she even asked me to replace all the ear wires on her other earrings with AS ear wires. (Then she had a baby and that little project got side-lined for a bit.)
Hi, I found your blog googling for information about argentium sterling silver. I have this same experience myself...I could never wear regular sterling silver earrings or any gold less than 18KT. But I made some hoop earrings out of argentium sterling silver wire and have had no problems wearing them. It's great!
I work with sterling silver but rarely wear it myself any more. I became unable to wear silver earrings many years ago, and even a sterling chain will feel itchy on my neck after a while. I have just made up an order of pendants in Argentium and liked its ability to fuse easily. So my next experiment will definitely be Argentium earrings and I'll test them out on myself.
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