Have you ever been reading about body piercings and body jewelry and have seen the word autoclave or this item is autoclavable? Well that probably led to you wondering well what is autoclavable? Well an autoclave a device commonly seen in the medical field it is widely used in hospitals, doctors offices, dental offices, and it is commonly seen tattoo shops and piercing studios. It is a device that is commonly used to sterilize the equipment and supplies used such as forceps, scalpel tools and much more. Its a machine that looks almost like a little microwave, and what it does exactly is sterilizes the contents within by a high pressure steam at an extremely high temperature for about 20 minutes to eliminate all germs from the materials. An autoclave is used in tattoo shops and piercing studios to sterilize the equipment that is being used. The metal forceps that are used at piercings, are cleaned in the autoclave after each use. Body jewelry before it is inserted into a persons body is cleaned beforehand commonly with an autoclave machine. A lot of body jewelry has pretty jewels and gems that can fall out during the autoclave process so not all body jewelry can be put into an autoclave but that doesn’t mean that it can not be cleaned. When you are shopping for initial piercing jewelry make sure that it is autoclavable as some won’t pierce you unless it is. If you do go to a tattoo or piercing shop and do not see an autoclave machine you should ask where it is and to see it. Make sure they are cleaning their supplies properly. A lot of piercers and artist have gone to disposable items such as disposable piercing forceps which are great and very health conscious.