Question from Stacey
Hi Debra,
I am wondering if rhodium-plated sterling silver jewelry (earrings, necklace) is safe to wear.
Thanks!
Debra’s Answer
No toxic effects of rhodium have been reported that I could find. One blog post reported of a toxic danger to workers from rhodium mixed with sulphuric acid, but even in this instance, it was the sulphuric acid that was noted as toxic, not the rhodium.
It appears to be fine, as far as I can tell.
Here is my disclaimer, though. I can only tell you if something is known to be toxic. I can’t guarantee something not known to be toxic really is not toxic or not. Many times substances thought to be safe have been found to be toxic.
But at the moment, to the best of my knowledge, I can’t find anything that says it’s toxic to wear as jewelry.
Also, there is your body! Whether or not your skin agrees to the metal or not also needs to be taken into account!
Absolutely. And it always comes down to that, which is part of the difficulty of establishing what is toxic. I can only look at scientific data and report to you what is known to be toxic by scientific method (or individual reports). But your body may tolerate something more or less, which is why it’s always an individual decision. You need to know your own body.
The other thing I would add to this is that rhodium is sometimes used to coat or “seal-in” alloyed metals of various types of jewelry, rendering it more hypoallergenic. I’ve had some experience with this as I have allergies/sensitivities to silver and nickel, to name a few. The problem hasn’t been, in my case, with the rhodium. But with some of my jewelry, rhodium wasn’t enough to seal in or protect m e from the effects of the silver and nickel. Also, to really complicate matters, there can be a cross-reactivity between certain metals and EMF sensitivities, which in my case I also have. Because most metals have a “charge”, this isn’t really that surprising but it isn’t something that most jewelers or metal-workers will tell you about (although in one case, a jeweler I talked to did say there could be a problem of cross-reactivity). As has been said, everyone is very individual and needs to find out for themselves what works and doesn’t. In my case, I try to stick with gold, which also has alloys but usually is more pure ( eg; fewer alloy products, but you still have to check) Recently this subject has really been on my mind as I got engaged to be married and we’re searching for a nice ring but are being very careful about the kind of metal used for the setting.