Most of this catalog is brass with a gold or silver plated finish. Brass is copper and zinc, and the alloys used in costume jewelry can contain small amounts of other metals, nickel among them. That matters because nickel is the metal people react to most often.
The American Academy of Dermatology puts nickel allergy at more than 18 percent of people in North America, including 11 million children in the US, and describes it as one of the most common causes of allergic contact dermatitis.
What a reaction looks like
Allergic contact dermatitis shows up where the metal touched the skin: a ring of redness under a pendant, a line under a chain, itching around an earring post. It can take a day or two to appear after contact. It clears when the contact stops, and it comes back when it starts again.
The academy's own test for this is simple: stop wearing the piece, and if the rash clears, put it back on. If the rash returns, a metal allergy is likely. Where a rash blisters, becomes infected, or comes and goes, the academy says to see a board-certified dermatologist rather than guessing.
Which metals are recommended instead
For people who react, the academy names surgical-grade stainless steel, 18, 22 or 24 karat yellow gold, pure sterling silver and platinum, and suggests watch straps of leather, cloth or plastic. Plated brass is not on that list, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Several CAROVO pieces are described by the brand as nickel free or hypoallergenic, and those carry the words on their card and in the spec table. That is the brand's statement about its own plating, not a clinical claim, and if you have reacted before it is worth treating a first wear as a test: a short one, and off at the first sign of redness.
A note about children
Jewelry for children carries its own rules in the US. The Consumer Product Safety Commission treats a children's product with more than 100 ppm of lead in an accessible component as a banned hazardous substance, and its staff work on cadmium in children's metal jewelry measures the hazard by how much the metal releases if an item is mouthed or swallowed rather than by total content alone.
Nothing in this catalog is sold as children's jewelry, and small pendants and clasps are a choking risk for a young child regardless of what they are made of.
If a figure here disagrees with a product page, the product page wins: both are built from the data behind the CAROVO lineup.
Questions