Your favorite necklace might be plotting against you. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, more than 50,000 Americans end up in hospital emergency rooms each year due to jewelry-related injuries. That's roughly one person every ten minutes getting attacked by their accessories.

The Usual Suspects

Rings are the biggest offenders. They get caught in machinery, stuck on swollen fingers, and yanked during sports. Degloving injuries—where a ring catches and strips the skin clean off a finger—are gruesome enough that many surgeons and mechanics refuse to wear them at all.

Earrings come in second. Toddlers grab them, they snag on clothing, and infected piercings send thousands to seek medical care. Hoop earrings are particularly notorious for getting caught and torn out.

Then there are necklaces—strangulation hazards for babies, catching points for workers, and garrotes-in-waiting during fights. The humble bracelet rounds out the danger squad, catching on everything from door handles to conveyor belts.

Who's Getting Hurt?

The demographics paint an interesting picture:

Children under 5 account for a massive chunk of injuries, mostly from swallowing small jewelry pieces or getting them stuck in ears and noses
Teenagers spike the stats with piercing complications and fashion jewelry allergic reactions
Adults over 65 frequently injure themselves removing rings from arthritic fingers

The Weirdest Cases

Emergency room doctors have seen it all. Tongue piercings cracked on hard candy. Belly button rings infected after pool parties. Wedding bands that required the fire department and industrial cutting tools to remove. One ER report described a man who caught his gold chain in a paper shredder—the machine won.

Body piercings add a whole new dimension of danger. Nipple piercings getting caught on loofahs. Eyebrow rings torn out during basketball games. The intimate piercings that emergency staff diplomatically describe as "activity-related injuries."

The Hidden Dangers

Beyond the obvious mechanical injuries, jewelry poses subtler threats. Nickel allergies affect roughly 10-15% of the population, causing contact dermatitis that can become severe. Cheap costume jewelry from overseas has been found containing cadmium and lead—toxic metals that leach through skin.

Even expensive jewelry isn't innocent. Watches harbor more bacteria than toilet seats. Rings create warm, moist environments perfect for fungal growth. That family heirloom might be a biohazard.

The 50,000 figure only counts emergency room visits. It doesn't include the millions of minor pinches, scratches, and allergic reactions people treat at home. The true toll of jewelry on human flesh is probably several times higher.

Still, we keep adorning ourselves. The jewelry industry generates over $70 billion annually in the U.S. alone. Apparently, the risk of looking good is worth the occasional trip to the ER.

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