There must have been a recent news story or a blog posting on hypersensitivity to nickel. The reason I say this is because in the past two weeks we have seen and heard from perhaps a half-dozen people asking about nickel test kits. As a result we have added a new solution to our chemical line, Dimethylglyoxime Solution in a 25 mL bottle. This solution, or reagent, turns pink in the presence of soluble nickel.
The same reagent can be used by meteorite hunters and collectors to test their specimens for nickel. For meteorites one first places a drop of 10-36% hydrochloric acid on the specimen and allows it to react with the specimen's surface for about 1 minute. Next the acid is swabbed from the specimen with a cotton swab and a drop of the dimethylglyoxime solution is placed on the swab. If nickel is present, even at very low levels, the swab will turn pink.
This same sort of test can be done with jewelry and other metalic articles suspected of containing nickel. Care must be taken, of course, when working with the concentrated hydrochloric acid.
==JFK==
1 comment:
... there is some increasing chatter regarding nickel pertaining to teenagers wearing braces - loosely citing that "30% of orthodontic patients experience nickel hypersensitivity". It looks to have begun with a TV news story picked up through an open-access research journal and made its diluted way across several digital channels propelled by a handful of "gossip blogs". I hope parents know not to test braces while they are attached to the teeth of their kids!!!! More than likely, this growing meme has morphed into a desire to test for nickel in jewelry, metal toys, etc. similar to the chinese-fed lead poisoning scare last year at this time.
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