You’ve probably heard that titanium is hypoallergenic, but what does that really mean? Although the term is not used in medicine, for practical purposes it means the body does not try to reject it and does not produce annoying reactions such as rashes and other allergic responses. So, even if you’ve had an unhappy experience with silver, low-karat gold, or other less expensive jewelry, you will not have a problem with titanium!
People have had titanium successfully implanted in their jaws, arm and leg bones, many joints in the body and titanium has long been used to make heart valves. Because the body does not detect the foreign material, healing takes place unhindered. You can find medical links and more information on Wikipedia. For those wearing titanium rings, this means you will not have any allergic reaction.
Back in the day when we used to show & sell our jewelry at art fairs, we had a couple of older women decline to buy our titanium jewelry saying, “Honey, at our age, we need the REAL thing.” We took that to mean that they wanted only gold or other precious metals and told them that titanium is indeed the “real” thing in that it is more pure than all but 24k gold. 14k and 18k are alloyed with copper, silver, palladium, and sometimes zinc and nickel, which means some very sensitive people may not be able to wear those alloys.
Some people are concerned that titanium is so hard that it can’t be cut off in an emergency. We addressed this aspect in our previous blog, “ titanium urban legends resized and cut to pieces.”
So, go ahead and choose your titanium ring in full confidence that it will be safe to wear.