Current White Gold Alloy Containing Nickel

You might want to point out that the alloy for white gold has nickel in it. People with nickel allergies can get a reaction from the alloy and not everyone knows that white gold can contain nickel/what alloys are/what that word means. (I've had to deal with clients who literally did not understand why 18k yellow cost more than 14k yellow and 14k yellow vs 14k white vs 14k rose.) There are different alloys for white gold that don't have nickel. Some countries are phasing out nickel white gold. Customers don't always check out the material guidelines.

The drawback with palladium as a substitute in the alloy the cost. However, to be honest, if platinum is now being offered and if people are willing to pay for a platinum piece then they would probably pay for this alloy. On most days Shapeways is cheaper than going to a casting house.

I think this is the first time I've ever posted in the Shapeways forum, so hi. *waves*

I did not meet any person with nickel allergy.

There it is a statistic on this ? How much people are affected from 1000 ?

An Hi!

First hit in a search for "nickel allergy prevalence" at least here for me is a pubmed link to a 2010 review published in Chemical Research in Toxicology. (Chem Res Toxicol. 2010 Feb 15;23(2):309-18. doi: 10.1021/tx9002726) The very first sentence of its abstract states

17% hmm that it is kinda high if we see it globally!

The Fitbit Flex was all the rage in sales just before Christmas 2013... It is one of those "watches" you wear around your wrist to measure your physical activity thru the day.
Both my wife and daughter developed rashes from wearing theirs.
In February, they issued a recall for the device, citing allergies to nickel.
https://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/1400358-can -the-wristband-irritate-my-skin

I know many people with a nickel allergy. One friend needed to have new doorknobs installed in her apartment because it is so bad. My personal disaster is when I got two rings cast in sterling silver back in 2011 when silver was $40 an ounce. Turns out the casting house still used nickel in the alloy instead of copper. I had no idea casting houses still used that alloy. Needless to say I was really angry since the recipient of the other ring made it clear they had an allergy... and turns out I had one too. Matching allergic reactions! Quite romantic. /sarcasm.

Also, to quote the material guidelines for Steel:

Some people may have a nickel allergy, so we do not recommend using the Polished Nickel finish for wearable items, particularly jewelry.

In the Design Guidelines for gold, https://www.shapeways.com/materials/gold?li=nav we do list that

"14k White Gold consists of 58% Gold, 24% Copper, 9% Zinc, and 9% Nickel"



If you plan to sell a product in a material that you know has nickle in it, I'd also recommend noting it in the description that it can be 9% Nickle as well.

I suspect that this rather high figure may be from studies of the prevalence of a certain genetic predisposition rather than from people who actually presented to a physician. So it may include cases where the condition is at least partially masked by some compensating mechanism (raised cellular level of some other metal-binding or metal-transporting protein that is much less efficient for nickel than for its usual target metal). Still one never knows how efficient such compensation might be - say handling doorknobs vs. wearing a ring, and even a mild rash will put one off wearing a piece of jewelry.
Interestingly, the brief abstract also contains a passing remark to cases of gold allergy, though in the context of occupational hazards.

I disagree. Probably most people getting a rash from a piece of jewelry simply stop wearing it, and don't visit a doctor if it then goes away.
Asking a sample of people if they've had such a rash, then testing those for allergens (or just allergen-testing the entire sample) would be considerably easier than figuring out the genetic predisposition[1] then testing a sample of people for that predisposition.

The other reason for it being an estimate is that it changes, and isn't uniform across the entire population. To be allergic to something you first need to be sensitised to it through exposure.

I'm not sure if the article is public access, but I can access the full text; here's a quote:
I had to restrain the length of that quote because it's a fascinating article.

If that doesn't persuade you, then perhaps this sentence from the article will: (Update) Finally, the obvious[2] thing against it being 'overcautious' genetic susceptibility testing rather than 'true' allergy is that there's a massive reported difference in rate between men and women. That ought to be quite hard to get past the referees if you wern't really checking for allergies proper.


[1] Just consider - how would you do that? The obvious way to start is to screen a sample of people for nickel allergy - by which point you'd have the prevalence data already!

[2] when you've already gone over the less-obvious reasons...

Got me there - never got around to actually reading the full article, though it seemed a fascinating read (mentioning allergies to all kinds of metals including gold if I remember correctly). I do not think it is publicly accessible on the internet, but any larger library should be able to provide a copy given the reference or DOI.