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Covid-19 Pandemic: Can frequent hand washing damage silver jewelry?

During this corona-virus pandemic we are advised to wash our hands many times, but will this damage your silver jewelry? Of course, your safety is a top priority during this difficult time.

It all depends what you use to clean your hands, soap or hand sanitizer.

Using soap to wash your hand or hand sanitizer to stanitize you hand and jewelry is not the worst, but it’s the best thing to do now. Ideally, we suggest you to remove your jewelry before washing your hands. Otherwise just rinse and dry your hands super well.

Soap and most hand sanitizers are safe for both gold and silver jewelry as long as they do not contain abrasives component! If these are used while wearing your jewelry, they could potentially scratch the metal on your jewelry. Alcohol in hand sanitizers can cause the finish on white-gold jewelry to wear more quickly if used in excess, but shouldn’t have a negative effect otherwise.

What Is Hand Sanitizer Made Of?

Hand sanitizer is a cleaning agent and disinfectant that falls into 2 categories:

Alcohol-based hand sanitizers either isopropyl or ethyl alcohol, water, glycerin and fragrance.
Alcohol-free hand sanitizers with antibacterial, triclosan, an antiseptic like povidone-iodine, and a chloride cleaning agent.

Most hand sanitizers contain 60-95% alcohol. While alcohol effectively limits the growth of harmful bacteria, it also has a negative impact on the quality of your jewelry.

The Safest Solution during this coronavirus pandemic.

Though your jewelry is precious and valuable, but our health and life are worth far more than that!

The point is that you don’t have to completely skip hand sanitizer to save your jewelry. Now, it’s vital to practice good cleaning and maintenance to preserve your jewelry.

Our recommendation:

Remove your jewelry when you wash your hands or apply hand sanitizer and dry your body or hands/fingers to completely dry before putting your jewelry back on.

Choose a hand sanitizer with 60%-70% alcohol instead of a higher alcohol content.

As for your jewelries such as ring, wedding bands, and hand or finger jewelry soak them in an ultrasonic cleaner. Or, a bowl of warm water and fragrance-free soap or dish-washing soap will do wonders.

It is better and safe to removing your jewelries during the Coronavirus pandemic. Covid-19 can attach on this jewelry and easy being transferred to other during physical contact so it is better to store them safely until the outbreak is over.