Materials to Avoid in a Piercing That Hasn't Healed

Plated and coated anything

Plating is measured in microns and wears from friction. In a piercing the part that wears fastest is the post — the exact surface inside the channel — because it is dragged through tissue on every insertion.

Once the layer is breached, the base metal beneath is in continuous contact with the inside of a piercing. That is a moist, absorbent environment, unlike the outside of a finger where plated jewellery is merely cosmetic.

This covers gold plated, gold vermeil, rose gold plated, black plated, PVD coated and "gold tone". It also covers gold filled, which has a much thicker bonded layer that lasts years in ordinary jewellery but is still a layer over base metal.

The exception that is not plating: anodised titanium. Anodising thickens titanium's own oxide layer, and the colour is light interference through it. There is no coating and no different metal underneath.

Sterling silver

Silver tarnishes — it reacts with sulphur compounds in air and on skin to form silver sulphide, the black film everyone recognises on cutlery.

On a bracelet that is a cleaning job. Inside a healing piercing it is different: the tarnish can deposit into the tissue of the channel and leave a permanent grey or black mark, an effect related to what is sometimes called argyria in its more severe systemic form. It does not wash out.

Sterling is also soft at 92.5% silver, so posts bend and scratch easily, and scratched surfaces hold bacteria. It is excluded from every accepted-materials list for healing piercings.

What to avoid, and why

Acrylic, plastic and "bioflex"

Acrylic is porous at a microscopic level, which means it holds bacteria in a way polished metal does not. It also cannot be autoclaved — heat deforms it — so it cannot be properly sterilised.

Acrylic degrades in contact with body fluids and with the alcohol in many cleaning products, becoming brittle and prone to cracking. A cracked acrylic bar inside a piercing is a genuinely unpleasant problem.

The one plastic that is accepted is PTFE to ASTM F754 — a specific, non-porous, sterilisable material used in particular circumstances, such as pregnancy navel bars or where flexibility is clinically needed. It is not the same thing as generic acrylic.

Steel without a grade

"Surgical steel" is a marketing phrase covering several different alloys. The grades that are actually accepted are ASTM F138 and ISO 5832-1 — implant-grade steel with controlled composition.

All of them, including the accepted grades, contain nickel — 316L is typically 10–14%. Good steel binds it well enough to stay under the UK legal release limit of 0.2 µg/cm² per week. Unspecified steel gives you no way to know whether it does.

What is actually accepted

The list used by jurisdictions that regulate body piercing is short and specific. Oregon's rule (OAR 331-900-0105) is a clearly published example: steel to ASTM F138 or ISO 5832-1; titanium alloy to ASTM F136 or F1295; commercially pure titanium to ASTM F67; solid 14 karat or higher gold free of nickel and cadmium; nickel-free platinum; niobium to ASTM B392; lead-free glass; and PTFE to ASTM F754.

Everything on that list is defined by a standard number. That is the pattern worth remembering: if a material cannot be named with a standard, it does not belong in a healing piercing.

Common questions

Sizes and healing times on this page are typical ranges, not guarantees — anatomy varies and healing differs from person to person. Your piercer has seen your piercing and we have not: check with them before changing jewellery, especially on one that is still settling.