Post #4140528

2026-07-27 15:39 UTC

honestly this is extremely worrying and I'd not trust any chinese cheap silver jewelry for now. it's hard to verify without sending a piece to a lab for verification which costs up to a few hundred and destroys the object, there are no good home testing kits, the ones that exist have a high false negative rate. it would make sense as an extremely common scam; Cadmium is the same kind of white-silvery as silver, but is a cheap side product of mining, and melts at just 321C vs silver's 961C.

Replies (3)

@_g_baer_@chaos.social 2026-07-27 15:43

@anthropy@mastodon.derg.nz Means, you need to bring it up to 380°C and if it's still in shape, you are fine? That's something a furnace for pottery might be capable of.

Open ##4140624
@anthropy@mastodon.derg.nz 2026-07-27 15:58

I'm not someone to ask for boosts but, this needs WAY more awareness, cadmium will poison you, cause kidney and other types of cancer, etc we could be looking at a huge ongoing scam here, and millions of people might be at serious risk of injury or illness Please let your family and friends know: Chinese 92.5% silver objects might actually be 92.5% CADMIUM I think I'm going to send some objects I have to a lab for proper analysis. Considering the price, it is not unlikely it is very common.

Open ##4140940
@multioculate@mastodon.social 2026-07-27 19:11

@anthropy@mastodon.derg.nz there are inexpensive-to-run non-destructive tests for this -- first and foremost, XRF. If you don't have access to the expensive equipment, though, any yellow-bottle plumber's torch from the hardware store will make a perfectly good test -- the flame temperature is just high enough to ball up the end of silver wire with effort and patience, but rapidly and easily melts plumber's solder (~350°C) and presumably also high-cadmium alloys.

Open ##4144760