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The gem industry is having second thoughts about the use of beryllium to color corundum. After condemning the flood of padparadscha look-alike sapphires created by the use of beryllium diffusion in 2001, dealers are now condoning a glut of yellow and golden sapphires produced by the same method.
"It is becoming increasingly difficult to find calibrated yellow sapphires that don't owe their color to beryllium treatment," says Shawn O'Sullivan, a gem buyer for Jewelry Television in Knoxville, Tennessee.
For single stones in free sizes, where there is still a choice between stones yellowed the old and new ways, "the price difference is now only around 20 percent and shrinking," says Benny Hakimi of Colorline in New York. If, and when, prices are the same for the two varieties, old-fashioned heat-treated yellow sapphire could disappear altogether.
Some say it already has. "Yellow sapphire produced by beryllium diffusion has been around since the process started," says noted physicist John Emmett. "It is nothing new."
But the scarcity of natural and heat-only alternatives in common sizes is new. Emmett explains the reasons for the sudden majority of diffusion-colored goods: "Natural yellow sapphires are quite rare. Heat-treated yellows are a lot less so but far from abundant. However, beryllium-diffused yellow sapphires can be manufactured from pale Montana and Songea [Tanzania] material as well as all the Geuda stones that didn't turn a good blue when heat-treated. Believe me, there's no end of material which lends itself to the beryllium diffusion manufacturing process."
There's just one problem: Many, if not most, of these sapphires are not being disclosed as what they are—at least, not at retail. While Jewelry Television says it is law-abiding, it uses a foggy phrase, "bulk diffusion," to explain the process. Dealers swear they are being truthful and specific about the nature of the treatment on their invoices, calling it exactly what it is. And most major gem labs are pledged to making specific comments about beryllium on their gem identification reports.
Nevertheless, no one denies that the gem trade would like to be relieved of the increasingly difficult legal obligation to segregate beryllium-treated from heat-treated sapphires. Toward that end, it is searching for a way to legitimize and market beryllium-treated stones. Better yet, it hopes for solid gemological justification to lump these goods together with conventionally heat-treated ones.
Recently, without intending to do so, GIA gave many the rationale they are seeking—or so many in the trade think. GIA says the trade may be clutching at straws.
CLOUDS OF CONFUSION
Until now, beryllium was universally believed to be a trace element foreign to corundum. As a non-occurring natural constituent, the color of stones produced by diffusion of this chemical was classified as artificial. "Diffusion is a form of dyeing plain and simple," says Emmett. "It's just like taking a colorless cloth and immersing it in a vat of yellow, pink, or blue dye."
Maybe so, but that didn't stop Bangkok treaters from resorting to this method to produce tons of orange-pink, then yellow-golden, and now even blue sapphires. "It's the best way to salvage all those mountains of otherwise useless colorless corundum," Emmett adds. "Besides, the treaters know that the cost of testing smaller stones for evidence of beryllium is so great it would be prohibitive to screen them for this trace element."
There is a deja vu to this latest barrage of controversially enhanced sapphire. Thailand's treaters are used to wearing down resistance to their various gem rehabilitation methods. Most Burmese goods for the past 20 years have been the product of extensive reclamation using fillers to hide numerous cracks. And for just about as long, diffusion has been a principal method of colorizing sapphire—first with titanium and now beryllium.
With beryllium treatment becoming the norm, it was only a matter of time, Emmett says, before the industry would seek to classify beryllium treatment under the general benign heading of heat treatment. This would end any need for more than cursory disclosure of the purely artificial nature of the color produced by diffusion. Besides, treaters argued, the colors created by this treatment penetrated entirely through stones—or certainly enough to eliminate the need for disclosure based on color durability concerns.
Last year, GIA provided the trade with the rationale it sought. Using Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometers (LA-ICP-MS), which analyzes trace elements in quantities so minute they are nearly negligible, GIA found beryllium in natural blue sapphires (see sidebar, "The Hunt for Chemical Culprits"). The news was greeted in some quarters as divine intervention. Finding beryllium in natural sapphires seemed to legitimize this treatment. As Hakimi puts it, "Many dealers now believe there are grounds to see beryllium treatment as acceptable as heat treatment."
GIA disputes those grounds. During an interview with members of GIA's research team, they unanimously indicate that it is premature to conclude beryllium is native to corundum in the same way as titanium. "So far," says Matthew Hall, GIA's New York manager of identification, "it has been detected in a single, highly qualified circumstance—namely as one element in foreign-matter inclusion clouds in blue sapphires. Since beryllium has never been detected apart from these clouds, the beryllium can't be said to be a basic chemical constituent or a color agent of natural corundum."
Tom Moses, GIA's senior vice president, laboratory and research, adds: "Given the analytical capabilities that GIA and other research institutes have, it is likely that other 'guest' elements will be found in corundum in small amounts. However, just because a trace amount of an element has been detected in corundum, it doesn't mean it should not be disclosed when large amounts of the same element are introduced artificially into a stone by non-natural means. It is not GIA's intention to pass judgment on any treatment process, only to make sure the nature of the process is clearly disclosed to the trade and public."
Dr. Wuyi Wang, GIA's research project manager, has another equally compelling reason to refuse beryllium membership into corundum's inner chemical circle. "The concentrations of beryllium that we've observed are insufficient to produce the kinds of color you get when you pack stones in beryllium powders," he says. "When beryllium is introduced into corundum, the intrinsic chemistry of the host material will greatly influence its effect on the color of the stone."
For Emmett, the discovery of beryllium in corundum was to be expected. "GIA is using equipment so sensitive it can find nearly any element in the periodic table in a gem," he says. "Detecting infinitesimal amounts of beryllium, while scientifically interesting, means little."
THE SILENCED MAJORITY
It is doubtful at this point that GIA's and Emmett's warnings against making a big ado over the presence of beryllium in sapphire will be heeded. This worries Emmett. "Does anyone remember how the retail customer reacted to titanium-diffused blue sapphire?" he asks. "They clearly said they wanted nothing to do with it. So why is the trade now pushing beryllium-diffused goods?"
Even before GIA published its surprising findings about the presence of beryllium in natural sapphire, the market was flooded with beryllium-treated yellow and golden stones—and price differentials with conventionally heat-treated goods began to narrow.
Most dealers took a purely pragmatic view of the situation, adjusting to and often arguing in favor of the new free flow of beryllium baubles. Alarmingly few raised the moral and ethical issues of allowing dealers in a producing country to unilaterally overwhelm the markets of consuming countries with highly controversial goods.
"There's never been much, if any, conversation between treaters and gemologists until way after they introduce a new treatment and the trade is deep in the throes of trauma," says gemologist Cap Beesley, president of American Gemological Laboratories in New York, which began mandatory disclosure of treatments on its reports in 1979.
That lack of conversation appalls dealer Simon Watt of Mayer & Watt, Maysville, Kentucky. And he thinks it will cause loss of trust in jewelers and the gems they sell. "Gem treatment is like sports doping," he says. "And the more the trade depends on it, the less free dealers are to talk about the problem. For the past ten years, I have refused to buy corundum in Bangkok because I can't trust my suppliers to disclose beryllium treatment and I am unable to afford the cost of testing. But all you have to do is walk around any major gem and jewelry show and look at all the counters filled with corundum whose colors are as uniform as paint chips. How did our market allow itself to be overrun with this merchandise?"
Emmett greatly admires Watt's boycott but he says it must become a mass movement if anything is to change. "We know who made the mess," he says. "And we know how to fix it—just say no to buying from them."
author: BY DAVID FEDERMAN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR - Modern Jeweler