Engineering and fabrication
What is the technical term called when you are allergic to metal? And what can you do to get rid of it?
Well ever since I was born I have been allergic to metal. I cant wear metal watches, metal necklaces, or metal bracelets without breaking out into rashes. I get rashes on my waste right below my belly button from metal button on jeans. I get rashes on my thigh for having change in my pocket to long. I get rashes on my nipple or close to my nipple when Im wearing my name tag at work cause the clip is made from metal and when I was a baby I use to get little cirlce red rashes down the middle of my chest from those metal circle buttons on one piece baby suits. All my life I have had this and so I was wondering is there a technically term for this?
Public Comments
- I don't know of a technical term, but I can tell you there is very little you can do as far as a cure goes.
However, if you put clear nail polish on the metals that are on you constantly (like your jeans button or the name tag--yes, they have to let you do it, since it's a health concern), it may help to alleviate the problem.
Try to figure out what kinds of metals you're allergic to and avoid them as much as possible. Also, visit an allergist. He would probably be able to give you more information than I can. Your general practitioner should be able to recommend one to you.
- It's hard to tell from your description whether you have allergic dermatits or contact dermatitis.
Allergic dermatitis is due to an allergic response. Allergies typically are to a very specific substance, not a general class of substance. For example, someone is usually allergic to a couples types of pollen, but not to most other pollens. In the case of metals, most described cases of allergic dermatitis involve heavy metals such as platinum, silver, iridium, lead and gold. I have not heard of reports of allergies to lighter transitional metals like iron, copper, nickel and tin, which are the metals typically used in common alloys, but I suppose it is at least theoretically possible.
A more likely possibility is contact dermatitis. I say more likely simply because more people have this type. There is no actual allergic immune response, but a generic inflammatory response to certain types of chemicals. Why this happens and how is not as well understood as with allergies, but suffice it to say that anything could cause contact dermatitis. Certain oils, detergents, particulates and solvents can commonly cause contact dermatitis. I wonder if you are getting contact dermatitis from some of the lubricants used in the metal stamping and casting process usually used to make much of the common metal items today.
If that's true, I'm not sure what you could do to get around this. In theory, washing metal items in solvent would get rid of the oils, but heck, you may be getting your reaction from the solvents they use to remove the oils, so this may make it worse...
- This link refers to the Melisa Foundation
http://www.melisa.org/
-and this link discusses the reliability of the malisa test.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=
Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids
=12743534&dopt=Abstract
This link has 7 pages and one discusses treatment
http://allergy.health.ivillage
.com/cosmeticschemicalsmetals
/metalallergies6.cfm
Hope this helps
Matador 89
- I've read that most reactions to metal are to nickel, and I believe it to be true. Gold isn't hard enough by itself to make jewelry, for example, and must be mixed with another metal for strength. Nickel is very often used. You may be able to wear sterling silver, or stainless steel. If it's for jewelry, Simply Whispers, Inc. (www.simplywhispers.com) will send free catalogs or you can by from their web site, and they give a lifetime guarantee that you won't react to their items. Also, I've recently seen store displays of jewelry they say is "nickel-free jewelry". You can also learn beading; the findings at hobby stores that say "sterling silver" don't break me out at all, nor do the same things bought from a jeweler for a lot more money (same thing). You can make your own jewelry.
