check the November/December Good Old Boat -- coming soon to a mailbox near you.
30 years or so ago, when stainless steel was seen as the silver bullet, the sailboat industry (not well populated by metallurgists at the time) buried countless tons of it out of sight (and out of oxygen). Now the chickens are coming home . . .
Don't assume lowers are less likely to fail. Yes they carry less load than the caps but . . . they are usually made of smaller wire and the chainplates are proportionately smaller. So, proportionately, they are just as highly loaded as the caps -- if you get my drift.