What I hear all the time: "I'm pierced with surgical steel, it's used in surgery so it must be top quality."
Nope. Let's break that down.
"Surgical steel" doesn't actually mean anything
Surgical steel is an umbrella term for any stainless metal used in medical settings, among other things. There's no standard, no exact definition. The same term gets slapped on tap installations, café tables, kitchen utensils, door handles, car parts. Anything stainless basically qualifies.
Because there's no real standard, manufacturers can use whatever alloy they want. In the piercing industry we call this "mystery metal" — because nobody actually knows what's in it.
The cheapest and most common alloy used is nickel. A huge chunk of people have some kind of reaction or allergy to nickel, which makes for a genuinely miserable healing piercing. On top of that, surgical steel jewelry is rarely polished to a proper finish — it often has tiny scratches that trap bacteria and irritate a healing piercing. It's also cheap to buy, which means a nice profit margin for piercers who use it.
What we actually use: implant grade titanium (ASTM F-136 ELI)
At LPR Piercing we only use implant grade titanium and solid gold — for fresh piercings and healed ones alike. Gold can't carry an "implant grade" certification the way titanium does, since gold tarnishes over time and isn't used for surgical implants. But solid gold, done properly, is still an excellent and safe choice for piercings.
Here's what ASTM F-136 ELI actually means:
ASTM = American Standard Test Method
F = metals approved for medical applications
ELI = Extra Low Interstitial, a higher grade used for long-term implants like knee or hip replacements
So when your titanium jewelry says ASTM F-136 ELI, that's not marketing language. It's the same standard used for implants that stay in your body for decades.
Photo credit "Amato Fine Jewelry and Body Piercing" On the left you see implant grade titanium, on the right surgical steel. This is also internally threaded and externally threaded, I will write about that in another blog.
Why the certification actually matters
Manufacturers working to ASTM standards have to produce a Mill Certificate — a document showing the exact chemical composition of the metal, checked and verified by ASTM itself, down to the smallest detail. Some European suppliers try to fake these, but the legitimate manufacturers and their certificates are known and traceable.
Here's the part that annoys me: in 2009 the EU set a regulation allowing a certain amount of nickel in jewelry, even though we know nickel causes reactions. Why does that happen? Same reason cigarettes are still legal. Known risk, allowed anyway.
There's also an ASTM F-138 standard for implant grade steel, which goes through the same rigorous testing to guarantee no nickel makes it into the alloy. As far as I know, Anatometal is currently the only brand making jewelry certified to this standard with traceable documentation — though if another brand has started, I'm happy to be corrected.
Why does it cost more?
ASTM-certified jewelry is mostly produced in the US, tested and verified at every step, then shipped to Europe with import taxes and customs costs on top. That adds to the price and sometimes to the wait. European manufacturers are slowly catching up and starting to take this seriously, but it'll take time before it's the norm here.
More US suppliers now have European distributors, so the jewelry gets to us faster — but the price stays where it is, because the testing and material itself cost what they cost.
For me, your safety and a clean, uneventful heal matter more than competing on price. That's why our jewelry costs a bit more than what you'll find elsewhere. It's also why it's worth it.
