Vienna - In the course of a year, the abrasion of wedding rings amounts to the loss of more than 16.7 kilogrammes of gold, worth more than 260,000 euros (411,000 dollars) for married Austrians, a local researcher has found.

In a study released in the Gold Bulletin journal, Georg Steinhauser, a chemist from Vienna's Technical University, quantified the annual losses for the first time following a study in which he used his own gold wedding ring.

Steinhauser said his ring was reduced by six milligrammes or the size of a pinhead, Steinhauser said. Extrapolated to all 1.7 million married couples in Austria these tiny losses added up to more than 16.5 kilogrammes of gold.

In July 2006, his ring weighed 5.584 grams and had a maximum thickness of 1.77 millimetres. During weekly measurements over one year it continuously lost weight.

Steinhauser advised those who held their rings dear to remove them when doing manual work, in particular gardening or when holidaying on the beach.

But skiing and visiting a rock concert also leads to a stronger- than-usual weight loss, the study said.

These findings also had implications for scientists, he said, urging them to go to their labs without their wedding rings. Even the tiniest chemical traces could falsify results in lab analyses, the study warned.