Surgical steel and stainless steel are not made for, and not safe to wear, inside the body. Neither is hypoallergenic — both contain traces of nickel, copper, lead, and chromium.
So what's the actual difference between the two?
Stainless steel vs surgical steel
Stainless steel is mostly what you find in the culinary world — pots, pans, knives. The high chromium content gives it good corrosion resistance, but it scratches easily and is genuinely difficult to polish to a smooth, safe finish.
Surgical steel is a variant of stainless steel made for biomedical tools and instruments — clamps, needles, that kind of thing. Not implants, despite what some piercers will tell you. It has better corrosion resistance, which makes it fine for long-term use as a tool, but it still doesn't have the right finish or alloy composition to be worn inside a healing wound. Most of the tools used in our industry are made from one of these two steels — but jewelry is a different story. For jewelry, we only use hypoallergenic materials: implant grade titanium, or solid 14kt gold and up.
Below picture shows the difference between implant grade titanium (left) and surgical steel (right)
Photo credit: Lynn Loheide
Implant grade steel exists too — just not the same thing
There's also implant grade steel, which is significantly more expensive than surgical or stainless steel and is genuinely made to be worn in the body long-term. Compared to implant grade titanium, it's heavier — some people actually prefer that weight for larger gauge jewelry or certain intimate piercings.
Other materials that aren't safe for fresh piercings
Silver and sterling silver. Fine once a piercing is fully healed and you don't have a metal sensitivity — not fine before that. Silver oxidizes on contact with bodily fluids, and a healing wound produces plenty of those. That oxidation can lead to infection, or worse, a permanent grey-blue "tarnish tattoo" left under the skin where the silver particles settled in also called argyria.
Acrylic. Two separate problems here. First, our autoclaves sterilize at up to 134°C, and acrylic simply melts at that temperature — so it can't be properly sterilized in the first place. Second, acrylic starts releasing toxic monomer vapors at temperatures as low as 21°C, well below normal body temperature. Worn inside the body, that means it's releasing those vapors constantly. Over time it also degrades, becoming porous — which is exactly the kind of surface bacteria love to latch onto.
PVD coated jewelry. The issue here isn't the coating itself — it's what's underneath it. Suppliers will usually tell us it's titanium, but there's no way for us to verify that. PVD coatings eventually crack, and when they do, whatever metal is hiding underneath comes into direct contact with your skin. If a splinter of that coating ends up inside a healing wound, you're looking at irritation or infection from a metal nobody can actually confirm.
What we actually use
Every piece of jewelry at La P'tite Rebelle is either implant grade titanium or solid 14kt gold and up without exception. Our titanium comes with genuine Mill Certificates — not the faked ones some European and Asian suppliers like to circulate to boost sales — and our gold comes with test certificates. These documents tell us exactly what's in the metal, which is how we know it's safe for a fresh piercing and safe to wear for years afterward.
Browse the webshop or book an appointment and let's get your jewelry upgraded.
