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Safety of Silver and the Risk of Argyria By Dr Keith Moeller Received a Doctorate in Naturopathy Introduction Humanity has had a love affair with silver for thousands of years, and it has touched almost every facet of life for those who could afford it. Historically, the precious metal was used in medicine, eating utensils, plates, cups, food containers, jewelry, money/coins, clothes, building materials, and as a disinfectant for water and human infection. Now, after hundreds of years of study and significant gains in knowledge, science and technology, silver is still being used for medicine, eating utensils, plates, cups, food containers, jewelry, money/coins, clothes, building materials, wound care, and as a disinfectant. It remains an important
part of our lives because of the exquisite nature and time-tested utility of the metal. It is safe to say that silver is being used in some way almost every day by every man, woman, or child in the civilized world. Can Silver Cause Heavy Metal Poisoning or Toxic Nephropathy? Many misinformed doctors, scientists, and media have been claiming for years that silver is a problem because it is a heavy metal, and as such can cause problems in the body. The problem is not with the silver but with the misinformation and inaccurate knowledge being spread by the people speaking about silver. The real answer is that silver is not toxic when used at reasonable levels and quantities. Any substance, even water, in excessive amounts can be fatal. Toxic nephropathy
or heavy metal poisoning is defined as, "Any functional or morphologic change in the kidney produced by an ingested, injected, inhaled, or absorbed drug, chemical, or biological agent." The MERCK Manual is sometimes referred to as the "Scientific Bible of Diagnosis and Therapy" by many scientists and doctors. Silver is not listed in the manual for causing heavy metal poisoning, because it does not cause it. (See MERCK manual (17th Edition, Pg 1880, table 226-1, third item listed, for the full list of heavy metals that cause toxic nephropathy)). In a peer-reviewed paper " Ultradilute Ag-Aquasols with extraordinary bactericidal properties: the role of the system Ag-O-H2O." (Materials Research Innovations, vol. 11, no. 1, (2007) pages 3-18) on the
subject of the safety of consuming metallic silver, the paper states (page 1, first paragraph of the introduction) 1 , "A recent paper by Das et al. Provides the remarkable datum that some 275,000 kg [(605,000 pounds)] of edible metallic silver foil are consumed every year (in food) in India. No known adverse health effects have ever been recorded. This epidemiological evidence that silver as a metal is not toxic in any way needs no further comment. Further support for the obvious safety of consuming metallic silver (Ag0) is in the worldwide consumption of (so called) silver colloids, often made at home in primitive electrochemical cells by probably some millions of citizens, again with no ill effects." What Is Argyria? What is Argyria and will I get
it if I use silver products? These are two very common questions. They are important because each of us needs to know that any product we are using or giving to our families will not hurt them nor do them any harm at all.
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Silver products alone generally have no negative side effects if used in reasonable amounts. However, the extreme misuse of some silver salts or chemical silver compounds may cause a condition called argyria. Argyria has no known negative side effects except that it causes a greying or bluing of the skin color. The condition is non-toxic and only cosmetic in nature (U.S. EPA RED Document on Silver, Page 3, Paragraph 3) 2 . What Causes Argyria? Put simply, argyria can result if there is so much chemical or ionic silver in the body at one time that the body cannot wash it out fast enough through its normal excretion systems. In order to get rid of this excess silver, the body walls it off in the cells, as it does with all the products it doesn't have
time to get rid of. In most cases the discoloration is permanent. It is the equivalent of getting a tattoo by misusing silver products in an extreme way. The condition is very rare, even in people who consume large amounts of ionic or chemical silver products at high levels, over years of use. Argyria has resulted from the extreme misuse of very strong silver solutions usually consisting of silver salts, including silver nitrate, silver arsphenamine, silver chloride and possibly silver iodide. These products were sold until about 1975 under various labels with solutions containing levels of silver ranging from 5-30%. That means that these products were used at levels as high as 50,000 - 300,000 ppm (parts per million) (Federal Register, FDA-21CFR
Part 310, pg. 53685) 3 . That is the equivalent of 5,000 to 30,000 times more silver than is used in most silver supplement products sold today, which would be from 10-32 ppm depending on the use. Argyria has also been known to result from the extreme misuse of some homemade products (usually small machine - battery produced products) where they are consumed daily in large quantities (8-24 ounces daily) over years of time. Minimum Amount of Silver Intake Known to Cause Argyria Historically The minimum amount of silver ever known to cause argyria in adults from the use of any silver compound (including salts) is 900 mg of silver taken orally within one year. In order to reach this level of silver intake, an individual would have to consume at least
380 - 8 oz. bottles of a 10 PPM silver product within a year. A recommended dose would be 3 teaspoons daily. This means that an individual would have to consume over 50 times the normal adult dosage every day for a year, to even reach the lowest level ever known to cause argyria. It should be noted that EPA standards for the amount of silver that can be safely consumed daily in drinking water is about the amount contained in a fluid ounce of 10 ppm silver solution (Rfd of .005 mg/kg, daily – EPA RED document page 2, 4th paragraph). It is also important to note that even during the years from 1918 to 1940 when silver was a government permitted product for use in the medical field, and when millions of people were using these very strong (high content)
silver products at more than 10,000 ppm, there were only about 7-12 people a year who developed generalized Argyria. Only Ionic or Chemical Forms of Silver Can Cause Argyria A peer-reviewed report from Pennsylvania State University was released after years of studying a number of colloidal silver and silver aquasol or nano products purchased from the U.S. market. The
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paper was authored by Professor Rustum Roy , along with seven other professors and scientists from leading universities. In the report cited on page 1, on the subject of ionic vs. metallic silver for human use, Dr. Roy states (page 2, fourth paragraph): "In spite of this enormous range of data, it is extraordinary that no major effort has been made to confirm and expand on the role of metallic silver in human health–especially in light of its huge advantage in lack of side effects. (Ingestion of excessive amounts of ionic (soluble) silver, not metallic solid particles is reported to have resulted in a very rare condition labeled argyria, an (irreversible?) darkening of the skin. No one has died of this condition. The safety of metallic silver sols is
firmly established by the data cited above.)" 1 The safer "metallic solid particles" or "metallic silver sols" he is referring to are silver particles that have a hard crystalline structure, which are often referred to as 'Nano Silver' due to their crystalline structure creating particle sizes 1 nanometer or larger (ie. Nano-silver is Nano-sized). These larger particles are still small enough to enter your bloodstream (see below), but they are not metabolized, and have never been shown to build up in the body. Nano-Silver Washes Out of The System Quickly According to a published human ingestion report, as reported to the US FDA " In vivo human time- exposure study of orally dosed commercial silver nanoparticles" , (also published: Nanomedicine. 2014
) 4 a nano s ilver liquid at an average size of 5-7 nanometer particles, when ingested, hit their height in the bloodstream within two hours. They also reported that the silver washed out very quickly, meaning within 24 hours with no measurable residual (silver left in the body). Ionic Or Colloidal Forms of Silver Are Excreted Slower than Nano-Silver The US EPA IRIS Report on silver (Integrated Risk Information Systems, 5th page, 1st paragraph) 5 it states that several tests were completed to test the absorption and retention of ingested silver in a number of animals, including primates (we are primates). In its conclusion, the test work indicated that between 90-99% of ingested silver was excreted on the second day after ingestion, and greater than
99% was excreted in less than a week. So, in other words, almost all of the ingested silver was out of the body in about two days, and most of the rest was out of the body in a week. Homemade Silver Products There is no simple way to accurately control or measure the amount of silver in products that are made in the typical home-made colloidal silver machines. Recent tests on a number of those machines have also shown that the product that they make is usually of very poor quality. In addition, it was found that the home-made products are made up of mostly ionic or soluble silver particles, not metallic particles. There are other problems associated with these machines as well. One is that because the products are so ineffective, the people who use
them usually have to drink a lot of the silver to get a positive benefit. This means that the increased amount of silver needed in their home-made product to receive a positive benefit can be way above the amount of silver a person should drink by government guidelines. When people drink large amounts of homemade silver products, they potentially expose themselves to silver build up in their body (argyria). However, even among the possibly hundreds of thousands of people
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who make their own silver products, the argyria condition is still very rare. The news media seems to love to find one of them every few years or so and put them on TV as part of a shock treatment for ratings. Even when it happens, such as the famed "Blue Man" on TV a number of years ago, extensive testing was completed on him and it was found that he suffered no ill conditions from argyria, except his bluish skin color. Argyria Causes No Known Negative Effects Other Than Pigmentation In an EPA report on drinking water (report ECAO-CIN-026 revised Jan.1991- Section VI, pages VI-1) 6 it states that silver has been used therapeutically for centuries. Two doctors in the report were injecting silver into people for various extreme health ills. Having
injected silver into patients over a period of years the doctors stated, (Hill and Pillsbury 1939, page VI-2) "the ordinary clinical use of silver compounds practically never gives rise to any gross untoward effect other than argyria." The paper also states (bottom of page VI-11), "There is no evidence that argyria alone is associated with any adverse effects other than the pigmentation." In other words, the only known potential side effect from the extreme misuse of medicinal silver products is the rare condition called argyria and that condition is cosmetic only. Conclusion There is no question about the amount of data that exists on the safety and general non-toxicity of using silver in its many human uses, especially when considering the fact
that millions of people use the metal daily. It has been used in almost every facet of human life. Metallic silver causes no nephropathy or heavy metal poisoning in the body. Silver is naturally one of the most broad-spectrum disinfectant and healing agents that exists. According to the EPA (who are in charge of defining safe levels of any mineral in water which is used for ingestion, drinking, or disinfecting), the oral consumption of small amounts of silver in water on a daily basis poses no significant degree of risk. According to historical published information on silver, unless an individual were consistently consuming (every day for over a year) over 50 times the recommended daily dosage of a 10-32 ppm product, there would be no possibility of
that individual contracting argyria. Metallic crystalline forms of silver have never been shown to build up in the body. Those people who use hundreds or even thousands of times the recommended daily dosages of certain types of silver run a risk of turning their skin blue or grey, but even then, the condition is very rare. There have been no reported deaths from the medicinal use of silver. References 1. " Ultradilute Ag-Aquasols with extraordinary bactericidal properties: the role of the system Ag-O-H2O." Materials Research Innovations, vol. 11, no. 1, (2007) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237277538_Ultradilute_Ag- aquasols_with_extraordinary_bactericidal_properties_Role_of_the_system_Ag-O-H2O 2. U.S. EPA Registration Eligibility Document
(RED) Document on Silver https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/reregistration/red_G-75_5-Sep-07.pdf 3. Federal Register, FDA-21CFR Part 310, pg. 53685 https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?CFRPart=310 4. " In vivo human time-exposure study of orally dosed commercial silver nanoparticles" Nanomedicine. 2014 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3877176/ 5. US EPA IRIS Report on silver (Integrated Risk Information Systems) https://iris.epa.gov/static/pdfs/0099_summary.pdf 6. EPA report ECAO-CIN-026 revised Jan.1991