Do Chemicals Affect Your Jewelry?
A woman loses a stone, she and her husband blame the retailer, the retailer blames the designer, the designer blames the manufacturers; the manufacturer looks for an answer. What causes breakage? Usually it’s stress or chemical corrosion from chlorine and bromine. Where does it originate? Hot tubs, swimming pools and laundry products.
Hoover & Strong conducted a controlled experiment to determine the effect of common chlorine and bromine products on jewelry settings. They used household bleach (heated and unheated), hot tub chlorine and bromine solutions and a chlorine free dishwashing detergent. They tested 14k and 18k nickel white settings, set and unset, rhodium plated and not plated, 14k palladium white gold and platinum settings.
As a result of these tests, they rated their products from the most chemical resistant to the least as follows:
1: platinum
2: rhodium plated 14k palladium white gold
3: 14k palladium white gold
4: rhodium plated 14k and 18k nickel white gold
5: 14k nickel white gold
Based on their testing, a consumer wearing a 14k nickel white gold setting could lose a stone or expect prong breakage as follows:
1) 5% chlorine bleach heated to 110F, prong failure occurred after 21 hours of exposure, only platinum and palladium white gold settings held their stones in this most severe test solution
2)5% chlorine bleach at room temperature- prong failure occurred after 120 hours of exposure
3) 5 parts per million chlorine using hot tub chemicals- prong failure after 312 hours or 156 days
4) 5parts per million bromine using hot tub chemicals- prong failure occurred after 384 hours or 192 days
5) household detergent- no visible effects on the settings
The settings soaked in the heated bleach suffered the most dramatic failure. The 14k nickel white gold was the first to fail in all solutions except household detergent. Testing bromine chemicals on yellow gold revealed that it does not affect white gold alloys as fast as yellow gold alloys. Bromine caused yellow gold to turn brown and make it brittle and prone to chemical corrosion cracking.
Lesson learned: Do not wear your jewelry in hot tubs or swimming pools. Take your jewelry off when using cleaning products and never ever clean rings with bleach!
Bring your jewelry into Carreras for proper cleaning.
