Featured Safe to wear bakelite? Odor and skin staining... advice?

Hey all! I recently got into looking for bakelite bracelets for myself as I just want something simple and bright to wear and thought bakelite would be a nice choice. However I found a bracelet today and wore it and it terribly stained my wrist a yellow color and it also smelled strongly. It also got a bit discolored on the inside. Given it was 85 degrees today and I was sweating but I only had it on for less than 10 minutes... any advice? Is bakelite even safe to wear at all?

 

The hype of formaldehyde harm is greatly exaggerated.

Most everyone in the developed world lived with it daily throughout the twentieth century with no ill effect.

 

I've worn bakelite necklaces, bangles and never done me any harm at all

 

I wore a Bakelite bead necklace on a hot day, took me a little while to realise the stench was emanating from that.

 

So instead of buying 409 or trying to furiously rub my thumb over a piece to get it hot I can just lay them out on the porch and sniff them 20 mins later? Or is it a reaction between skin, item, and heat not just item and heat??? This would be amazing. I have like 40 bracelets I need to test.

 

Hot water dunking is easy with a follow up of a q tip dipped in baking soda to make sure.
I wouldn’t be doing the 40 all at once though, your nose would become desensitised!

 

If it stank to high heaven and turned your wrist yellow, mazel tov! Good old sunshine this time of year may well work just fine, but it kills celluloid so be careful if you use hot water or other heat. I once killed a celluloid purse by putting it in the trunk of my car. It smelled of vinegar when I got home, and the started collapsing.

 

I had never heard of this one and was excited to try it as I forget 409 every time I go to the store. Then I read evelyb30s post about heat killing celluloid. I assume some in the bunch have to be other plastics and that seems a likely one. Shoot.

 

All I use are q-tips, some water, and baking soda. Get the q-tip damp and dunk in the baking soda. Rub on the inside of the bracelet, hard, preferably next to your nose. The real stuff will stink of formaldehyde and the q-tip will turn yellow or brown. If it's celluloid you'll smell camphor, or should. Galaith was a bakelite-type plastic made of rotten milk. Pongs of it too if you test it. The color change isn't definitive; tobacco smoke does almost the same thing. The stink however is tough to fake.

 

Awesome thanks for the advice. Must have baking soda around somewhere. Didn’t know celluloid smelled. I don’t even know if I know what camphor smells like. Googled it and I’ve never used vapor rubs so other than menthol I don’t know what to “smell for”. I was about to list an older poker set. I’ll test the chips too.

 

But how can I stop it from staining me when I wear it? I was thinking of lining it with leather or something so the bakelite doesn't contact my skin directly.

 

Ok so I’m trying this right now. Is a dark brown with a light brown edge Bakelite? I’m getting that on some beads I have with a strong smell. I realized I’m not even 100% sure what formaldehyde smells like. I had a good yellow result from a bracelet. The beads I tried the same spot like 6 times to make sure it wasn’t just dirt I was getting. I was surprised by some bracelets I thought probably were Bakelite than turned out not to be. The poker chips have a real funk of a smell to them but very little color on my q-tip. Think they used Galaith in poker chips?

 

Sounds like. Also sounds like tobacco. Formaldehyde is a stink that once you've smelled it, you don't forget it. Modern plastic smells like plastic. Anything else, ya gotta wonder.

 

I’m guessing what I’m smelling is formaldehyde. Can’t imagine what else it would be. Maybe I should stop by a funeral home and ask for a whiff just to burn it into my memory. I recall back in the day you would hear of people putting it on wacky tabacky for a “killer” high.

 

"Wet" if memory serves. Embalming fluid and pot...who thinks up this stuff?

 

Ahahaha. Yeh actually that’s exactly what they called it. That and “smokin bodies”. That last bit may or may not have come out of a hip hop song but I heard people say it for sure. I’m not sure who thinks of the stuff but someone’s gotta try it all at some point. The common example being who was the first one to look at a lobster and say “yeh I want to eat that”. Inevitably it was a really hungry guy I guess is the answer. The guy who thought of wet inevitably really didn’t like the way he felt and was willing to try anything to feel differently I guess. Either that or people who worked at formaldehyde factories back in the day passed on the secret. Pretty crazy stuff. Glad it wasn’t around where I was from!

 

there's a hard right turn somewhere here......

 

In Albuquerque, according to Bugs Bunny.