Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Colloidal and Ionic Silver
The heightened alarm comes in response to a federal report indicating that the bacteria Methicillin-
resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, are responsible for more deaths in the United States each
year than AIDS. —Ian Urbina, New York Times , October 19, 2007
Imagine a powerful antibiotic agent that attacks more than 600 harmful bacteria, protozoa,
molds, yeasts, and viruses that you can make yourself any time and any place for just pennies a
day. This is what proponents of colloidal and ionic silver claim it to be. They tout it as a solu-
tion to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as MRSA, and possibly devastating future plagues.
Colloids are solutions of particles that are so tiny that they remain suspended in a liquid
without settling to the bottom of their container, and colloidal silver is a solution of water with
tiny suspended particles of silver. Ionic silver is a solution with extremely tiny electrically
charged particles of silver that are on the order of the size of individual molecules. According
to some proponents of ionic silver, it is the charged particles of silver that are primarily re-
sponsible for the healing and antibiotic properties in both of these related solutions. Since col-
loidal silver is the more common term, rather than saying colloidal/ionic silver, I will simply
refer to these solutions as “colloidal silver.”
Caution: There is a rare medical condition, known as argyria, which is caused by the inges-
tion of large amounts of silver, typically in the form of the silver salts and nitrates that were
common in patent medicines of the 1800s and early 1900s. Argyria is a cosmetic condition that
is physically harmless, but results in an undesirable bluish tint in some parts of the body. The
recent news headlines about a “blue man” suffering from argyria makes it clear that it is pos-
sible to overdo it with colloidal silver. Apparently, this man had been suffering from a bad case
of dermatitis, and had treated it for over a decade both by drinking large amounts of colloidal
silver daily, supposedly a quart or more per day, and also rubbing colloidal silver on his skin
every day (Fox News 2007). Proponents of ionic silver state that the particles of silver in this
type of solution are so small, and the actual amount of silver in these solutions is so tiny, that
the chance of getting argyria from the consumption of ionic silver is practically nonexistent.
From 1900 to 1950, when most cases of argyria were reported, silver-based medicines typically
contained large concentrations of silver nitrates or silver chlorides and were not based on col-
loidal or ionic silvers, which are typically effective using far smaller net amounts of silver. At
any rate, I suggest that you proceed cautiously when ingesting significant quantities of colloidal
or ionic silver on a regular basis.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search