G’day all; The best way to sterilize anything properly is by
heat; but that is not to say that the earring post or wires should go
red hot. Do what the microbiologists do when they need to transfer a
bacterial colony to a different medium and must be sure that their
tools are not contaminated with other bacteria etc. They use thin
wires to pick up and transfer a part of the bacterial colony of
choice, but before they do anything they pass the wires quite quickly
through an alcohol flame - and that’s it. There is no need for the
wires to be in the flame for more than half a second. I have
personally done this and to check, deliberately loaded wires with
several bacterial varieties, passed it through a flame, then touched
the wire to a special medium which encourages bacterial growth. In
each case, there was no resultant growth after incubation for 24
hours.
I know; it doesn’t seem long enough in the flame and you can’t tell
if the wires are sterilized simply by just looking. But I assure you
that it works; I was sceptical too, which is why I did the tests.
The reason why simply dipping earring wires into antiseptics may be
insufficient, is because with moisture present, bacteria clump
together in microscopic films and exude a kind of goo. That’s what
plaque on your teeth consists of. Which means that anti bacterial
substances - yes even vicious ones including bleach and povidone
iodine - have difficulty in penetrating the clump to get at the
innermost bacteria and/or viruses, which are therefore not killed.
However, they cannot escape heat. Anyway, a jeweller knows better
than to have iodine or bleach on gold or silver; it reacts with them.
– Cheers now, John Burgess; @John_Burgess2 of Mapua Nelson NZ