All that glitters is not gold   Your wedding jewellery may not be as pure or as precious as you think it is. Several goldsmiths across India have taken to adulterating the precious metal with iridium and ruthenium, and are getting away with it, as until recently the metals failed to show up on all purity checks.

It's an alchemist's dream, and the practice is becoming increasingly commonplace if you go by the stocks of the `duplicate' metals at even the smallest of karigar workshops. Both iridium and ruthenium belong to the platinum family of metals, and when mixed with gold, do not form an alloy but sit tight in the yellow metal.    What makes the adulteration even more alarming is that the metals do not replace silver and copper, which are added to the gold during the jewellery-making process to harden the soft, malleable yellow metal. As Saumen Bhaumik, general manager (Retailing) at Tanishq put it, "The two metals manage to camouflage as gold.'' TOI tested several pieces of jewellery, and all had some amount of either iridium or ruthenium lurking inconspicuously with the gold. A 22-carat gold bangle bought in 2003 from a century- and-a-half-old jeweller-who has since then expanded from Mumbai to other parts of the country- when tested at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, had 3% iridium in it.   A gold chain bought from a shop in Bangalore in 2002 when tested at another city-based centre had 2.39% ruthenium, while a pair of earrings from Kerala was found to be adulterated with 4.65% of iridium. On an average, a piece of jewellery or a bar of gold contains nearly 5-6% of the adulterant, and manufacturers- wholesalers and retailers across India-are aware of how rampant this notorious practice is. Consumers, however, are the biggest losers as they have been kept in the dark.    "Most machine-made jewellery contain these adulterants. Overnight, these manufacturers hit the jackpot,'' said Suresh Hundia, president of The Bombay Bullion Association (BBA).    The situation came to head when several refineries across India noticed that the gold bought from the market, which when melted, contained at least 6% adulterants. "Some refineries complained that a blackish substance kept floating in the aqua regia (mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid, which can dissolve gold). Moreover, if they bought 1kg of gold, they were losing 50-60gm after refinement. At the time, they didn't know where the rest of the gold was getting lost,'' said a Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) official.  Source: The Times of India (30 Jan 2009)

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