Earrings for Sensitive Ears: What Actually Causes a Reaction

Most people who react to earrings assume it's an allergy to silver, or to metal generally. It's usually neither. It's nickel, and more precisely, how much of that nickel reaches your skin while you wear the piece, not how much sits in the alloy to begin with.

Nickel isn't the whole story

Nickel is the usual trigger. Most people already know that much. What's missed is that the number that matters isn't how much nickel is in the metal, but how much comes off onto skin, over time, in sweat. Two alloys can both contain nickel and behave completely differently, because release depends on alloy structure and finish, not just presence. That's why a bare "nickel-free" label tells you little on its own. Nickel-free by what measure, tested how, against which number? Our is my silver real guide covers that gap.

What the standard actually measures

The UK and EU set an actual number for this rather than leaving it to a label. Jewellery for prolonged skin contact is capped at 0.5 micrograms of nickel released per square centimetre per week. Anything through a piercing, so the post itself, has a tighter limit: 0.2. The test seals the piece in synthetic sweat at body temperature for a week and measures what comes off. That's a release rate under real conditions, a different question from whether something is genuine silver.

A reaction, or an unhealed piercing?

These get confused constantly. A new piercing is an open wound for weeks, longer for cartilage, and some redness, tenderness and clear discharge in that window is normal healing, not a reaction. A genuine reaction looks different: persistent itching, redness or darkening specifically where metal sits, continuing well past when healing should finish, or appearing after years of trouble-free wear with one particular pair. We won't diagnose either one here. If anything persists past the normal healing window, see a doctor or your piercer rather than guessing.

The parts most likely to cause trouble

The front of an earring is rarely the problem. The back and the post are, because that's what stays in constant, sealed contact with skin, and it's the part brands cut corners on most. Plated base metal is the highest-risk kind: the plating is usually what's tested, and once it wears through, whatever's underneath, often a nickel alloy, is what's touching skin. Sleeping in earrings makes this worse, trapping sweat against skin for hours with no break. For a first piercing, especially on a child, our guide to screw-back earrings covers a different, more mechanical risk: a stud that comes loose rather than one that reacts.

Silver, tested against the number, not just by name

Ours is genuine 925 sterling silver, and the Sheffield Assay Office in the UK tests it for purity and for nickel, cadmium and lead release against those same limits, sealed in synthetic sweat for a week, the method the standard specifies. Nickel-free, cadmium-free, lead-free, and hypoallergenic as a result, not as a claim on its own. Our stud collection and hoop earrings are made to that standard, and so are our earrings for girls, useful for a child's first piercing. If a brand calls itself hypoallergenic, ask who tested it and against which limit. Most won't have an answer.