Nickel allergy - practical advice and help

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Nickel allergy - dealing with items you want to keep or use containing or plated with nickel.

As a nickel allergy sufferer, my personal recommendation is to get rid of as many nickel items as you possibly can. If you have them around you will inevitably come into contact with them. However, if you feel the need to keep them, my recommendations are here.

Dealing with nickel items - plating or coating

One often recommended method for dealing with nickel jewelry is to coat it with some kind of barrier. You can easily buy "hypoallergenic" brush-on varnishes - seems to be nothing more than nail varnish to me. This can help BUT it wears off and you're back to square one. And worse you may not immediately realise it's worn off until you break out again.

Yes, you guessed it, I don't recommend coating. If you need to do it, be careful to re-coat regularly.

Dealing with nickel items - use another barrier

When I'm using tools - doing d-i-y around the house, I always use gloves. It's basically impossible to buy a full set of tools with no nickel content. At minimum, the business end (eg drill bits, blades, etc) can be alloyed with nickel for hardness. I have found the best option to be gloves (see my section on gloves). For rougher jobs I put work gloves over nitrile gloves. That way I don't tear the nitrile gloves and I can pop the work gloves on and off as needed but still be protected.

Replacing

Replacing nickel items is the best route - take a nickel test kit with you when shopping for replacements!

Sentimental value

The toughest problem can be jewelry like a wedding ring which starts to become a problem for you. Quite likely you and your husband spent some time choosing it and it's special in so many ways. Since this ring is connected so intimately to your marriage it can feel very wrong to give it up even if it is causing you discomfort. Obviously, you need to find the path which makes most sense to you but one suggestion (thanks to my visitors for this idea) - is to re-bless the ring. It doesn't need to be a big ceremonious re-do - and this can be kind of fun to do just the two of you - to go back to where you originally got married and have a new (nickel-free!) ring re-blessed.

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