SC - gold leaf

[Mark Schuldenfrei]

  While pure gold and silver are mostly harmless, there are people with metal
  allergies.  Also apparently silver is a "heavy metal" (not a guitar riff) and
  can give people mild blood poisoning- this from a body piercer admonishing
  that piercings done with silver would not heal neatly or quickly.

I remember taking a biology/immunology course, where the professor talked
about the bodies reaction to foreign matter.  The professor made the rather
bizarre analogy: the body reacts to things that are inside of it, generally.
And in this case, you can think of the human body as an elongated torus:
stuff inside the alimentary canal is not "inside" the person.  Most allergic
reactions come about when the material crosses a cellular barrier and hits
the bloodstream.

While that can happen via swallowing food or foreign objects (ie bowel
perforations or bleeding ulcers), it is not terribly likely even in those
that react to silver body jewelry.  In my non-medical opinion, of course.

	Tibor (In this case, am I "Tube-bor? :-)