I use both grade 5 and 23 titanium with my piercings as an upgrade for people with a nickel sensitivity or a preference towards it. Many will cry that grade 5 is inferior and cannot be used in piercings. This is…. not exactly true. At all. We’ll kill this one with science…. 

    Technically speaking, grade 23 and 5 are variations of the same alloy - TI6AL4V (titanium alloyed with 6% aluminum and 4% vanadium). The difference between grades comes from the different oxygen content in each of them (0.13% in grade 23, 0.20% in grade 5) which modify some of the basic alloy mechanical properties such as strength and toughness. It’s difficult to say which one is better, regarding a jewelry item. Grade 23 is more malleable, while grade 5 has more strength. However, it is highly unlikely that a nose ring used in normal circumstances will be put under such stress factors for these differences to become noticeable. There is no difference between grades as regarding hypoallergenic properties, meaning they are both virtually allergy free.

    So there you go. Same metal with a different oxygen content. 

You are more likely to contract a disease from your dentist than your tattoo artist. Stupid? Yeah, but it’s true….

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One of the things I hear most from people getting work out of the house is, “but he took it out of a package.” Awesome. My favorite response is to ask if they’ve ever seen a sterile pen and toss one in a package and hand it to them.

Understanding doesn’t take long to cross their face.

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Universal Precautions

Standards - 29 CFR 1910.1030(b)
Universal Precautions is an approach to infection control. According to the concept of Universal Precautions, all human blood and certain human body fluids are treated as if known to be infectious for HIV, HBV, and other bloodborne pathogens.

CDC, Update OpCit “…In universal precautions, all blood is assumed to be potentially infective for bloodborne pathogens…” OpCit Summary p.70

What does this mean? This means that everyone you ever meet that you don’t personally know (and most of the ones you do) are diseased.

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