A friend tells me that she and many or most of her Desi girlfriends have skin issues if they wear jewelry that is not silver, gold, ect, even if it is high quality stainless steel, and that she has never encountered a white person complaining of the same problem.
Has anyone else heard anything like this? It seems far-fetched, but could S. Asians have evolved some mechanism for detecting fake jewelry? Or is this something cultural, or an immune system quirk, or what?
I can’t speak to the South Asian issue, but I can tell you that I have encountered many, many white people who have metal allergies and are unable to wear lower quality jewelry. Often the problem is an allergy to nickel, which is frequently used as an alloy with gold and silver. According to WebMD, nickel allergy is the second most common cause of skin reactions, after poison ivy. There are companies that manufacture hypoallergenic and nickel-free jewelry to address this problem.
Eh, just go with copper.
South Asian here.
I have friends who wear copper bracelets believing it helps regulate high blood pressure.:dubious:
Male members of Sikh community wears Kada. I have never seen any issue with any of my Sikh fiends.
Also Many poor ladies in rural areas wear cheap imitation jewellery, since they cannot afford real ones.
I wear a kada sometimes, despite not being Sikh. (yeah, yeah, I know. I just don’t care. It was a gift from someone who loved me.)
Currently I have silver plated earrings in.
I also wear imitation jewerly…but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to be careful. As SpoilerVirgin, nickel is a huge allergy. There are others. I’ve come across stuff made of brass, which I cannot wear. And it also depends on the hole, how recently it was pierced, etc.
But to say that S. Asians can tell if jewelry is made of gold? I wish I could! Well, I totally can - by the color, and maybe the stamp inside if I really need to. 
I would be willing to bet that I could package diamond earrings set in stainless steel in the tiffany’s platinum setting box and they wouldn’t have any problem with the earrings. :dubious:
I am actually the reverse, I wear stainless and silver - gold makes my piercing holes go all nasty and infected in about 24 hours even with proper care. I can ignore stainless and silver for a week and not have issues. I am wearing 12 ga horn swirlies right now. [and those get taken care of very carefully, natural organic materials can turn nasty very quickly without very careful sterilization.]