About Safe Body Piercing Jewelry

In order to be safe and confortable all jewelry placed in body piercing must be of the appropriate quality, style and size


QUALITY

With the popularity of body piercing, an enormous quantity of body jewelry is now available on the market, sold everywhere from convenient store to gas stations...
Most of this jewelry doesn't even meet the basic requirement to be safe.

The 3 main factors that determine the quality of body piercing jewelry are:

Material:

Safe during healing and for long time wearing are:
  • 6Al4V ELI certified ASTM F-136 Implant Grade Titanium
  • 316LVM certified ASTM F-138 Implant Grade Stainless Steel
  • Niobium
  • 18K - 22k White or Yellow Gold
  • Platinum
  • PTFE
  • Silicone
  • Glass

Other materials have been traditionally used for making jewelry, especially for ears, i.e. silver, bronze, horn, bone, hard wood, stones, etc... , those are intended only for temporary wearing and limited to ear lobe piercing.

Polishing:

Piercing jewelry must be polished to a mirror finish. Jewelry that is not highly polished will be more porous and that can results in healing delays and complications as well as additional discomfort.
All jewelry must be free of nicks, scratches, burrs, and polishing compounds.

mirror finish

Shaping:

Rings should be perfectly round and bars perfectly straight, without warping or irregularities. Jewelry with numerous or sharp angles that pass through the piercing is inappropriate.

internally threaded barbells

Internal Threading.

As can be easily seen the smooth surface of the bar and its rounded end ensure comfortable and safe insertion and removal of the jewel...

externally threaded barbells

External Threading.

Clearly an inferior design.


STYLE and SIZE

Many variations in style does exist for body piercing jewelry.
Here's some example of the basic designs:

basic body jewelry styles

Style and size must be carefully chosen to best fit your piercing!
An improper style and the wrong size will affect your piercing leading to migration, rejection or scarring...


Last words...

Finally our advice: if you want to buy body piercing jewelry, but you are not sure about what will best fit your piercing, then you should go to a reputable body piercing studio, whose professional piercer you trust.
The piercer can first check your piercing to see if it is ready to have the jewelry changed, then he should be more than happy to guide you in your purchase, showing proof of material quality, suggesting you a suitable shape and accurately determining the proper size.
In a body piercing studio you can also have your jewelry changed in a clean and gentle way.