NATIONAL JEWELER 47 that has tested or bought our machine finds undisclosed lab-grown diamonds. High-end or mass-market, it makes no difference. The contamination is everywhere.” He has endless examples of this “contamination.” They include a gem lab, which Skuza will not publicly identify for confidentiality reasons, that quality controls more than 1,000 stones on a weekly basis for a major reseller and regularly finds more than 5 percent of its diamond products containing undis- closed man-made diamonds. He also cites an example in which a customer checking a 5-carat parcel of 0.02-carat diamonds at the recent JCK Las Vegas show dis- covered that nearly 75 percent of the diamonds he had just purchased were man-made. TAKING ACTION Although the battle against undisclosed lab-grown diamonds feels a bit like fighting terrorism—those who want to cause disruption are always one step ahead of those seeking to curtail it—the industry is far from powerless. Manufacturers and dealers should use all the means at their dispos- al to stem the flow of undisclosed lab-grown stones further down the supply chain. But, retailers must also do their part to prevent these stones from ending up in the hands of unsuspecting end consumers. Jonathan Kendall, president of the International Institute of Diamond Grading & Research (IIDGR), a De Beers Group company, says the first piece of advice for retailers who suspect they might have received undisclosed lab-grown diamonds is not to panic. The second is to review what safeguards they have in place regard- ing the products they sell, noting that, “Every individual business is responsible for the integrity of its merchandise.” Retailers can try to ensure all the diamonds they buy and sell come with an objective grading report. However, not all goods have grading reports. In such cases, they can send out their inventory to any of the major labs for testing. However, this can add up in cost—both for the testing and the associated administrative costs—and time, putting a real strain on smaller businesses in particular. An alternative is to invest in one of the diamond detection machines geared toward retailers that allow jewelers to test their inventory, including mounted jewelry, on an as-needed and just-in-time basis. HRD Antwerp produces the D-Screen, a portable piece of equipment that distinguishes lab-grown stones from natural diamonds. The machine can also determine if a stone has undergone high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) treatment to improve or enhance its color. The D-Screen can check all diamond cuts and can scan up to 200 stones, from 0.2 carats to 10 carats in D to J colors, an hour, with immediate results. IIDGR has just released the SYNTHdetect. Designed for back-office use by jewelry manufacturers and retailers, SYNTHde- tect (and the second version of the lab’s automated melee screener, AMS2) works by identifying diamonds as natural, rather than looking for telltale signs of lab-grown origin. This, says Kendall, is “a major step forward in technology.” IIDGR says it has the industry’s lowest referral rate, around 0.05 percent, compared with other screening products that can have a referral rate approaching 10 percent. The referral rate has to do with those diamonds that the machine cannot 100 percent ver- ify as not being lab-grown and, therefore, must be sent to a gemologi- cal lab for further testing. The low referral rate of SYNTHdetect is designed to save retailers both time and money. IIDGR also offers the lower-cost Phos- View ($4,500 versus $16,250 for SYN- THdetect). This is a more basic machine that analyzes parcels of polished diamonds to determine if they contain potential HPHT-grown diamonds only. GIA is already taking orders for its soon-to-be-released GIA iD100, an easy-to-operate desktop instrument that identifies mounted and loose natural col- orless diamonds. The instrument combines advanced spectroscopic technology and GIA’s extensive research into natural and man-made diamonds to uncover all lab-grown diamonds—made with both the HPHT and chemical vapor deposition processes—and all simulants. The lab is conducting further research to extend the capabilities of the instrument to identify pink diamonds and other gem material. Finally, DRC Techno’s J-Screen Plus identifies CVD and HPHT lab-grown diamonds and can be used on loose or mounted stones as small as 0.003 carats in any shape. The easy-to-understand results Although the battle against undisclosed lab-grown diamonds feels a bit like fighting terrorism, the industry is far from powerless. Top, an International Institute of Diamond Grading and Research worker operating the first version of the lab’s Automated Melee Screener, or AMS,machine. Bottom,another IIDGR screening device, the DiamondView