Appendix B: Note on ”Content of undesirable heavy metal in precious metals jewelleries”

Survey and health assessment of chemical substances in jewelleries

In the project ”Survey and health assessment of chemical substances in jewelleries” it is suggested that the purchases of the jewelleries are focused towards the cheaper qualities of metal jewelleries with and without a content of precious metal. The argument of not including the more expensive “precious metals jewelleries” in the survey is that these are subject to control by the Precious Metal Assay and Inspection and are not expected to contain heavy metals at a problematic level.

The present note has the purpose to present the information which the Danish assay office already has regarding the content of undesirable heavy metals (primarily lead and cadmium) in precious metal jewelleries. Thus the note functions as a presentation to the decision whether precious metal jewelleries shall be included or excluded in the project.

What are precious metal jewelleries?

In the project the definition precious metal jewelleries covers genuine gold and silver jewelleries as well as jewelleries of platinum and palladium. According to the law these genuine jewelleries must have a “Fineness mark” telling what the content of precious metal in the good is, calculated in thousandth parts (per thousand), as well as a signature stamp informing about the person/company who has produced or imported the good. Foreign goods may be stamped with a so-called convention stamp which means that no Danish signature stamp is required. Furthermore, small goods of gold (below 1 gram) and silver (below 3 gram) are excluded from the requirements on stamping but they are not excluded from the requirements regarding control.

According to the legislation a genuine gold jewellery must contain at least 333 per thousand gold while a genuine silver jewellery must contain at least 800 per thousand silver. For jewelleries of platinum the content must be at least 850 per thousand platinum while jewelleries of palladium must contain at least 500 per thousand palladium. Goods with lower fineness are not allowed to be marketed as goods of precious metal. Furthermore applies that the fineness of precious metal in all parts must correspond to the stamped.

Besides gold, the gold alloys, for use in jewelleries, consist typically of silver, copper, zinc, nickel and/or palladium while besides silver, the silver alloys consists typically of copper. The alloy metals applied in platinum and palladium can be copper, silver, chromium, cobalt and tungsten. An alloy means a metallic material which does not consist of a only one type of metal but on purpose is added (by melting) one or several elements to reach certain material properties, e.g. more strength or hardness. A coating means a layer of a material upon another material, e.g. gold on a brass ring.

The Danish assay office’s test of precious metal jewelleries

FORCE Technology’s independent certification organ FORCE-Dantest CERT is selected as Precious metal control in Denmark and controls that the provisions of the law are fulfilled. This is done through unannounced visits at the companies which prepare and deal with goods of precious metals. According to the legislation the place of sale is responsible for the content of precious metal in the goods.

On average about 3000 samples are made yearly. The samples are tested whether the content of precious metal is in accordance with the stamped. The tests are primarily for the content of gold, silver, platinum and palladium. Among the tested goods are metals for all kinds of precious metal jewelleries produced in or imported to Denmark.

As the Danish assay office primarily analyzes for the content of precious metals we have as a supplement chosen to carry out a small survey among Danish precious metal wholesalers as well as companies who buy used precious metal for refining. This survey had the purpose to clarify to which extent these companies experience a problem with the content of undesirable heavy metals (primarily lead and cadmium) in their products.

Survey at precious metal companies

The Danish assay office holds a list of companies who act in the Danish precious metal trade. From this list the following 14 companies were contacted by phone:

Two companies working with regaining of used precious metals.
Four companies who are suppliers of raw materials and semi-products to the precious metal industry in Denmark.
Three companies who make their own meltings for production of alloys in precious metals.
Five companies who deal with goods produced by others, often purchased abroad.

The companies who through melting produced their own alloys could inform that silver alloys consist of Ag and Cu while a gold alloy typically consisted of Au, Ag, Cu, Zn, Ni or Pd plus perhaps Pt, Ir or Rh. Thus they could inform that they did not have a content of undesirable heavy metals in their products. A single company informed that a content of Pb and Cd was undesirable in their production as the material properties became undesirable due to among other things formations of cracks.

Suppliers of raw materials and semi-products informed that their alloys consisted of the same elements as informed above even though there were a few factory secrets of which there was no knowledge in Denmark. One of the raw material suppliers told that from this company, materials for hard-soldering containing Cd were sold but this was legal under the given circumstances. All in all the assessment was that suppliers of raw materials and semi-products for the Danish precious metal industry did not experience a problem with content of undesirable heavy metals in their products.

Companies who purchased used metal, including precious metals, could not inform which elements besides the already mentioned that could appear in material originating from precious metal jewelleries and their production.

Importers of finished goods from abroad did only relate themselves to the content of Ni or more correctly to emission of Ni which the legal requirement deals with. They had no clear knowledge of whether their materials contained other kinds of elements.

Thus the survey targeting the companies indicates that companies who themselves produce goods for the precious metal industry in Denmark do not generally experience problems with the content of undesirable heavy materials in precious metal jewelleries. The remaining companies (importers and companies working with regaining) could not right away comment whether their products contained undesirable heavy metals.

Finally it can be mentioned that in general the companies had not heard about this kind of problems before, but they had heard that there might be problems related to the content of for instance Cd in cheaper jewelleries imported from the East.

Preliminary screening of 94 metal bijouterie jewelleries

At present we have carried out XRF screenings on 94 purchased metal bijouterie jewelleries. This first screening indicate that there is a proportionally large content of Pb in about 1/3 of all analyzed jewellery parts as well as a content of Cd and in some cases even Hg in a small selection of the jewelleries. Thus this preliminary result confirms the hypothesis that it is in the cheaper metal bijouterie the problems with a content of undesirable heavy metals occur.

Conclusion

The survey indicated that the Danish companies in the precious metal trade do not experience a problem with a content of undesirable heavy metals in products related to precious metal jewelleries. However, based on the survey, it cannot be excluded that heavy metals like Pb and Cd can be found in raw materials and finished goods as it is not possible to analyze for these metals in the Danish value chain for precious metal, with exception of a few special cases.

However, our assessment is that possible problems with precious metal jewelleries will be of a substantial smaller scope than the problems with the cheaper jewelleries and therefore we maintain our proposal of not including precious metal jewelleries in the survey. However, FORCE Technology is open for making analyses of selected jewelleries, for instance small pieces of a gold and silver chain as a purchase of such products does not influence the budget unnecessarily and at the same time the same analyses as for the cheaper jewelleries can be made. However, it must be stressed that such a screening will only cover a very small part of the total market of precious metal jewelleries.