Why You Shouldn’t Settle for Steel Jewelry

 Piercings are easy right? So easy Shein and Amazon sell kits. And you’d think that using something with the word “surgical” in the name means it’s of great quality. 

Wrong. 

Not only are these kits not safe but the APP no longer considers steel to be of a suitable metal quality to be pierced with. The piercing industry is relatively young. It’s only in the last 30 years that we’ve even had actual piercing jewelry and until the last few years steel was “it”. 

What is steel?

Let’s start with the basic. Steel is actually a mixture of metals. These can include things like nickel and lead. Now most people with common sense know those two are bad, but because steel is so hard to trace (it’s a mixture!) it’s hard to tell just how much nickel or lead your steel jewelry contains. Being “surgical” grade steel simply means that these metals are below a certain threshold - not nonexistent. So any steel jewelry, no matter what quality, can still contain lead, nickel and other dangerous metals. The more you wear these metals the more sensitive your body becomes to them. Eventually your body will not tolerate it and the piercing begins to act out. 

Most piercers still using steel simply don’t care. You’ll lose the piercing, or at the least by the time you have problems they assume you won’t know any better and can parrot that the jewelry was “surgical” quality and therefore not their fault. Now, this is a “most” scenario. There are always people who successfully wear even the cheapest and most questionable metals, but we as piercers want to make sure that the rest of you have healthy piercings too!

Why does it matter?

Healing a piercing isn’t easy or fun. No one wants to go through months of care, but especially no one wants to go through months of care and then lose the piercing. 

Pictures often describe better what words can’t. Here’s a picture from the APP comparing steel on the right and titanium body jewelry on the left. 


Hopefully the first thing that stands out to you is all those little nicks and marks on the metal! Steel is much softer than titanium which means even when it’s polished highly it still doesn’t hold that polish for long. The reason those little marks are so important is that they’re the perfect reservoir for bacteria to hide from you while you’re cleaning. It’s also a way for the thin coating on the outside if it’s only plated to become damaged and whatever mystery metal might be inside to contact your skin. Gross. 


What we offer

Our studio conforms to the APP standards for initial jewelry. While we haven’t been in business long enough to be certified by the APP I have taken several of their classes and do my best to follow their methods. The APP requires that our jewelry has what’s called a “Mill Certificate”. This means we can trace the metal from the jewelry back to where it was created, to the individual batch even. We only pierce with ASTM-F136 titanium or nickel-free 14k gold. 




The APP sets standards for our industry but piercers are not required to follow them. From an ethical standpoint we feel that we should. As our clients you deserve a safe and educated piercing experience which we aim to provide. 

Have questions? Want to get a new piercing? Click on my link below and shoot me a message and I’ll be glad to answer them for you. 

Contact Me

#piercing #safepiercing #virginiapiercer #femalepiercer #piercereducation #astm136 #titaniumbodyjewelry #bodyjewelry #damnitdeb #piercerblog #bodymodification #roanokeva #roanoke #roanokepiercing #pierceme


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