Silver is often
referred to by its detractors -- in ominous, sensationalistic tones -- as a “toxic
heavy metal.”
But is this true? Or is it just overblown rhetoric and
propaganda from those with a vested interest in keeping people in abject fear
of silver, and in ignorance of its powerful healing and infection-fighting
qualities?
Let’s face it. Just about anything can be toxic if used
abusively. But as I’ll explain below,
silver is not in the least bit toxic when used within reason and
moderation.
Here’s what you need
to know…
Hi, Steve Barwick here, for www.TheSilverEdge.com...
Silver, gold,
copper and platinum are noble metals,
not "heavy metals" like mercury, plutonium or lead.
Indeed, silver is not even mentioned at all in the
Wikipedia.com article on "heavy metals" at this link. And that’s because it’s not a heavy
metal.
The confusion comes in because silver has been used
alongside of mercury for decades, in mercy amalgam fillings.
In dentistry, the silver, a noble metal, is combined with
mercury, a toxic heavy metal, because silver helps defeat many of mercury's
toxic qualities by acting as a stabilizer.
And it provides antimicrobial protection as well.
Because the two metals are used together in dentristy,
people tend to lump them together. But
nothing could be further from the truth.
As Harvard-educated Dr. Jonathan Wright, M.D. states:
"Silver
belongs to the family of metals that also includes copper and gold (both of
which can also have numerous health benefits when they're used properly).
One
of the primary concerns people tend to have about using these metals is the
risk that they'll accumulate in the body and lead to 'heavy metal toxicity'.
But
if you have plenty of antioxidants in your diet, such as selenium, vitamin E,
and amino acids like N-acetyl cysteine, you're safe from any harmful effects
from this family of metals. Germs, however, are not."
In other words, the body has a perfectly good mechanism for
processing and eliminating silver, as long as the proper antioxidants are
present.
Indeed, people have safely been ingesting silver in small
amounts for thousands of years. As the
Dartmouth University Toxic Metals Research Program states:
"Trace
amounts of silver are in the bodies of all humans and animals. We normally take
in between 70 and 88 micrograms of silver a day, half of that amount from our
diet.
Humans
have evolved with efficient methods of dealing with that intake, however. Over
99 percent is readily excreted from the body.
Is
silver harmful to humans?
Unlike
other metals such as lead and mercury, silver is not toxic to humans and is not
known to cause cancer, reproductive or neurological damage, or other chronic
adverse effects."
As Britain’s greatest expert on the use of silver in
healthcare, Dr. Alan B.G. Lansdown has stated:
“Contrary to statements that all
forms of silver are cumulative once they enter body tissues and that very
little is excreted, silver is actively metabolized in the human body and a
large part eliminated eventually via the liver, urine and hair...
…there is very little
substantive evidence that silver acts either as a cumulative poison in the
human body like lead and mercury, or that it reaches toxic levels in any
tissue.
Silver does accumulate
preferentially in the basement membrane region of the dermis, but no evidence
has been seen to show that this is either life-threatening or a clinical
manifestation of toxicity.”
-- “Silver in Healthcare: Its
Antimicrobial Efficacy and Safety in Use,” by Alan B. G. Lansdown, pg. 45, 59,
60
According to researchers Drake and Hazelwood, in the study
“Exposure-Related Health Effects of Silver and Silver Compounds: A Review” (see
earlier link for full study):
“Silver
in any form is not thought to be toxic to the immune, cardiovascular, nervous,
or reproductive systems (ATSDR, 1990) and is not considered to be carcinogenic
(Furst and Schlauder, 1978).”
And as stated in the April 2010 issue of Journal of Materials
Engineering and Performance:
"Noble
metals such as copper, gold, and silver have broad-spectrum antimicrobial
activity.
For
example, silver has several effects on microorganisms, including impeding the
electron transport system and preventing DNA replication...
…In
previous studies, silver has demonstrated antimicrobial activity against a
broad range of fungi, viruses, and bacteria."
The bottom line is that silver is not a “heavy metal.” And any “toxicity” is strictly related to
taking excessive dosages.
“The Dose is the
Poison”
After all, anything on the face of the earth can be toxic if
ingested in excessive dosages. As the ancient physician Paracelcus used to
teach:
“Poison
is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a
poison or a remedy.” -- Paracelsus PA (1493-1541)
In other words, there's no substance on the face of the
earth that's not harmful at some
dosage level.
Most common nutritional minerals in your daily,
multi-vitamin/mineral supplement, for example, can be extremely toxic if taken in
excessive dosages.
·
The mineral selenium can cause nervous system
damage when ingested in excessively high doses.
·
The mineral iron can cause heart disease and
other serious problems when ingested in overly high doses.
·
The mineral copper, in excessive dosages, can be
a nervous system toxin.
·
Zinc or any of the other minerals that are
essential to human health, and which you probably take every day in your daily
multi-vitamin/mineral supplement, can be toxic if ingested in excessive
quantities.
I could go on and on through all of the minerals, but I
think you get the point. This does not make any of these nutritional minerals
“heavy metals” or “toxins.” It just
makes excessive usage of them problematic.
The same is true with silver. Silver is virtually harmless when used in
small daily amounts (except in extremely rare cases of silver allergy, in which
the most common side effect is rash or hives).
But like all other minerals silver can be toxic if used
abusively over long periods of time. So
the key is to use silver in moderation
– just like you do with minerals like iron, selenium, zinc, or chromium -- and
not in excessive quantities over long periods of time.
It’s All a Matter Of Perspective
It might surprise you to learn that in many countries,
silver is consumed orally, literally by the tons
every single year.
For example, in India, several times a year during certain
festivals, as well as at weddings and at the traditional outdoor food bazaars,
the people eat traditional Indian sweets.
And these sweets are wrapped in a pure silver foil called Varak (or Varakh) that’s been beaten
thin so it can be used to wrap the food.
These sweets are generally ingested silver foil and all by the Indian people. This has been going on for thousands of years
in India. Just about everybody there
does it. (See article here.)
And there's apparently never been any cases whatsoever of
“silver poisoning” or harm from "heavy metal toxicity" from this
traditional cultural activity.
Indeed, the government of India has approved silver foil as
a food-grade ingredient, as long as it’s 99.9% purity or better.
In other words, the Indian government doesn’t limit the use
of edible silver, but they do regulate the purity
of the silver that can be used in food applications and eaten, allowing their
citizens to eat only the purest silver possible!
(See “Justifying the
Need to Prescribe Limits for Toxic Metal Contaminants in Food-Grade Silver
Foils, journal of Food Additives and Contaminants, 2005 Dec;22(12):1219-23.)
As stated in the journal Materials Research Innovations,
Vol. 11, No. 1, (2007)
pages 3-18:
“A
recent paper by Das et al. provides the remarkable datum that some 275,000 kg
[605,000 pounds -- ED] 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.”
-- Das, M. Dixit, S. Khanna, S.
K., Food Additives and Contaminants
Again, that’s an astonishing 605,000 pounds – or 302.5 tons – of silver are ingested every single year in food, in
India. You’d think the entire population
of India would be in the hospital suffering from “heavy metal poisoning” by
now, but obviously they’re not.
As Keith Moeller of American Biotech Labs has pointed out in
his very interesting White Paper titled “The Safety of Using Silver Solutions
and the Risk of Argyria”:
“It
is estimated that the Indian tradition of eating candy and cakes wrapped in
metallic silver foil (eaten foil and all) came from their historically gained
knowledge that in their warm, moist climate with little refrigeration of foods,
eating the silver-covered candy and cakes after meals would kill the bacteria
consumed with the food, before it had a chance to do damage to their body
systems.
In
other words, the people of India have proven over the last thousand years that
eating or consuming small amounts of metallic silver in traditional Indian
foods has no negative effect on the body or body systems."
-- Keith Moeller, The
Safety of Using Silver Solutions and the Risk of Argyria, American Biotech
Labs, January 15th, 2008
New Clinical Safety
Study
Interestingly, researchers at the University of Utah
recently released the first-ever double-blind, placebo-controlled human
ingestion safety study of colloidal silver, and found zero signs of “toxicity”
or other detrimental effects on the human body from the daily ingestion of
small amounts of colloidal silver.
What was most fascinating to me was that as a preliminary to
the study, the researchers conducted MRI scans and blood work on one individual
who had been using small daily amounts of colloidal silver for 15 years, and
could find no evidence whatsoever of silver deposition in the tissues or
organs, and no signs of toxicity either.
You can read my article on this recent study at this
link.
So I think that carries along pretty well with the notion that the vast majority of ingested silver is indeed effectively eliminated from the body, and causes no “toxicity” at all as long as excessive/abusive amounts are not taken that could overwhelm the body's built-in mechanisms for eliminating silver.
So I think that carries along pretty well with the notion that the vast majority of ingested silver is indeed effectively eliminated from the body, and causes no “toxicity” at all as long as excessive/abusive amounts are not taken that could overwhelm the body's built-in mechanisms for eliminating silver.
Use of Silver in
Foods in
Europe, India and the
U.S.
Silver is also used in foods in both the U.S. and throughout
Europe.
Indeed, for hundreds of years here in the U.S., cake
decorators have added silver dragees
(those little tiny silver balls) to cakes and cupcakes.
Most people don't know those little silver balls contain a
combination of pure, ground-up silver mixed with sugar. Yet in all of these years, there was never a case of "poisoning by
dragee" or "heavy metal toxicity by dragee," even though
Americans have eaten literally tons
of these silver-based sweets on baked goods and cakes.
Heck, when I was a kid my mom was a cake decorator, and I
used to pick those little silver balls off the cupcakes and eat them first
because they tasted so good.
Sometimes I'd even swipe her little plastic container full of
silver dragees from the kitchen cupboard and eat them all. Now that was probably 45 or 50 years ago, and
I was never harmed by it.
But now apparently some money-grubbing lawyer has started
suing U.S. companies that make the silver dragees, claiming the silver is
"toxic." As a result, most
companies that sell silver dragees now print the words "for decorative
purposes only" on the package.
According to the news articles I’ve read, this lawyer openly
admits he’s never been able to find anyone who’s been harmed by consuming the
little silver dragees. Nevertheless, he’s actually won some court victories by
claiming silver is a ‘toxic metal’ and the companies selling the dragees are
acting irresponsibly by selling them as a food item.
According to news reports, he uses a “protect the children” approach, which of course, gains him great sympathy from ignorant trial jury members who believe his claims even though these little silver balls have been consumed by kids and adults alike for many decades here in the U.S. and there’s never been a single person harmed by eating them.
In Europe, silver is also allowed as a food ingredient in
cakes, candies and other sweet goods. In
fact, in the European Union silver has its own “E-number,” meaning its own food
additive approval number, which is E 174.
It’s approved in quantum
satis, meaning in practically unlimited amounts, as long as it’s pure, and
is used as a food “colourant” in decorative cakes, candies or other sweets,
such as the little silver dragees discussed above. It’s apparently even approved for use in the
ultra-thin sheets such as those used on sweets in India.
Here’s what the EU document allowing the use of silver as a
food additive states:
“E 174 (Silver) is used to
decorate cakes, candies, and other sweets, and Annex IV of Directive 94/36
allows unlimited use (quantum satis) of this colourant in foods.
The standards for purity
regarding E 174 (Silver) are reported in EC Directive 94/45 of the 26 July 1995
Commission, which deals with colourants that can be used in foods.
The Directive notes that silver
presents as a powder composed of finely ground particles of the metal. The
metal can also be transformed into ultra-thin sheets or films.”
According to Anders Sultan, Sweden’s largest manufacturer of
colloidal silver:
“In
Europe one of those tiny silver balls used in sweet foods like cakes and
candies contains the equivalent of 30 ml [i.e., a little over one fluid ounce –
ED] of 10 ppm colloidal silver.
That’s
300 micro grams per decoration ball. Two year old kids usually have ten or
more of these on a piece of birthday cake.
That
is the same as drinking 300 ml [i.e., a little over 10 ounces – ED] of a 10 ppm
colloidal silver product.”
Well, all I can say is don’t let the damned lawyers in
Europe find out about this, or they’ll be suing the European Union health and
food authorities for promoting “toxic heavy metal poisoning” of children.
Finally, according to a study published in the journal Food Additives and Contaminants (2005
Dec; 22(12):1219-23), even the United Nations and the World Health Organization
have approved of pure silver as a food additive.
Indeed, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations FAO and the World Health Organization WHO, which evaluate the safety of
food additives, has included silver in the list of approved food additives for
use world-wide.
Look At the Facts
So when you can step back and look at the facts, the whole
idea that silver is a “toxic heavy metal” is ridiculously overblown.
As Keith Moeller of American Biotech Labs has pointed out:
“As
of late, many doctors, scientists, and now the media, have been claiming that
silver is a problem because it is a ‘heavy metal,’ and as such can poison 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).”
The bottom line is that tens of millions of people worldwide
use products like colloidal silver regularly.
And literally tons of pure silver is consumed in food items by tens of
millions of people around the world.
What’s more, silver has been used in the drinking water on
space flights for both the Space Shuttle and in the Russian Space Station (see here).
It's used in Mexico to disinfect the drinking water...it's
used on cruise ships to disinfect the water…it's used in third world countries
to disinfect the drinking water (see here).
So, literally all around the world to this day silver is
regularly ingested in relatively small amounts.
And it virtually never causes
any harm except when people get stupid and start abusing it by taking
excessively large quantities on a regular basis.
Otherwise, it has a number of fabulous infection-fighting
and health-promoting qualities which you can read about on the Colloidal Silver Success
Stories website.
Mom’s Protective Rule
Clearly, if silver was actually a “toxic heavy metal” it
would not be approved as a food additive by the governments of India, America,
the European Union, or organizations like the World Health Organization and the
United Nations.
Could you imagine actual heavy metals like lead or mercury
being approved of as food ingredients?
Of course not.
But the reality that silver is approved virtually worldwide
as a food ingredient, as well as a nutritional supplement in most countries, won’t
stop people with hidden vested interests (usually drug company shills) from
making the sensationalistic claim that silver is a “toxic heavy metal.”
We just have to make our own decisions, from the facts at hand,
and take responsibility for our own personal choices.
When I was a very young child my mother taught me a simple
rule to live by: "Moderation in all
things."
Whenever I've stepped outside of the boundaries of that rule
for any prolonged period of time, I've usually paid quite a price for it. And when I've lived by that rule, I've done
pretty well.
It's common sense that taking substances abusively –
regardless of how otherwise benign they may be -- can lead to harm.
And considering the fact that over the past few decades a very
tiny handful of people who have taken colloidal silver abusively have ended up
with what have been described as toxicity issues, I think I'll stick to the
"moderation in all things" rule when taking colloidal silver.
I've been taking colloidal silver almost daily for nearly 20
years now, in relatively small dosages of an ounce a day or less, on average, and
have had only good and healthful experiences with it.
If I'm experiencing an infection or illness of some kind, I
might dramatically increase my colloidal silver dosage, sometimes to as much as
four ounces, two or three times a day.
But afterwards I always take a nice two or three week
"vacation" away from colloidal silver usage, during which time I
drink lots of fresh, pure water to help flush any excess silver out from my
kidneys and liver.
Then I go back to my normal (for me) one ounce a day daily
regimen. Some people say I'm
overly-cautious. And so be it. I think it's prudent not to take excessive
amounts of colloidal silver daily for long periods of time.
What’s more, I always take the antioxidant supplements known
to help the human body process silver efficiently and effectively – supplements
recommended by Dr. Jonathan Wright, M.D., such as Vitamin E, selenium and
N-Acetyl Cysteine (NAC).
And I regularly supplement with a good, probiotic supplement
composed of a “grid” of beneficial digestive microbes, just in case my
colloidal silver usage kills off any of the good bacteria in my digestive
tract.
The bottom line is that I thoroughly believe in my mom’s old
maxim of “moderation in all things.”
It’s never let me down. And I'd
like to keep it that way. So I won’t
abuse colloidal silver (or any other substance, frankly) by taking excessive
amounts.
To learn more about colloidal silver and safety, read my
article "Is Colloidal Silver Safe to Use?" at this link.
To learn about determining a safe daily dosage of colloidal
silver, based on your body weight and the ppm (i.e., concentration) of
colloidal silver you’re taking, see the article titled “How Much Colloidal
Silver Can You Take Safely Each Day?” at this
link.
To learn how to make your own high-quality colloidal silver, quickly and
easily, in the comfort and privacy of your own home, and for less than 36 cents a quart, just click
the link in this sentence.
Meanwhile, I’ll be back next week with another great article
on colloidal silver…
Yours for the safe, sane and responsible
use of colloidal silver,
Steve Barwick, author
The Ultimate Colloidal Silver Manual
The Ultimate Colloidal Silver Manual
Helpful Links:
Important Note and
Disclaimer: The contents of this Ezine have not been
evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
Information conveyed herein is from sources deemed to be accurate and
reliable, but no guarantee can be made in regards to the accuracy and
reliability thereof. The author, Steve
Barwick, is a natural health journalist with over 30 years of experience
writing professionally about natural health topics. He is not
a doctor. Therefore, nothing stated in
this Ezine should be construed as prescriptive in nature, nor is any part of
this Ezine meant to be considered a substitute for professional medical
advice. Nothing reported herein is
intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. The author is simply reporting in
journalistic fashion what he has learned during the past 17 years of
journalistic research into colloidal silver and its usage. Therefore, the information and data presented
should be considered for informational purposes only, and approached with
caution. Readers should verify for
themselves, and to their own satisfaction, from other knowledgeable sources
such as their doctor, the accuracy and reliability of all reports, ideas,
conclusions, comments and opinions stated herein. All important health care decisions should be
made under the guidance and direction of a legitimate, knowledgeable and
experienced health care professional.
Readers are solely responsible for their choices. The author and publisher disclaim
responsibility and/or liability for any loss or hardship that may be incurred
as a result of the use or application of any information included in this Ezine.
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2013 | Life & Health Research Group, LLC | PO Box 1239 | Peoria AZ
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