Here's the other post in which I question the accuracy of one of the
most visible "argyria" related sites. This site showed up *first*
when I did an infoseek search on the single word "argyria."
Please read the whole thing. It gets a bit technical in the middle,
but my conclusions are readable.
Any of you with the training to double check my math below, please
comment!
Mike D.
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Subject: Lyme site and argyria
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 08:57:03 -5
Hi List!
On my quest for argyria information the other night, I found this site
by a Lyme disease victim by the name of Don Chinnini:
http://cassia.jerseycape.net/index.htm
It makes an interesting read, and gathers in one place a lot of
information that might be useful to Lyme sufferers.
He cautions *against* using CS, although he experimented with it for a
short time, because of the argyria scare he put himself through.
If you follow the link for "Medical Journals and Other Information"
from the home page, and scroll down to the "articles listed by product
type" section, you will find a group of links to silver related
article abstracts. These come from a Medline search he did on silver
and argyria. The link to this exact spot is:
http://cassia.jerseycape.net/library.html#product
Take a tour of these articles, if you dare. They list a bunch of
cases of argyria from a host of different sources and exposure
levels. Only one abstract even mentions use of "silver salts or
colloidal silver" as potential causes of argyria, but doesn't
identify the source of silver in the case studied.
There's even a link to the "Why Rosemary turned blue" page, that
recounts one woman's experience of argyria from -- not colloidal
silver, but prescription *nose drops.*
Argyria is bad news. And we certainly should take every precaution to
be sure it doesn't happen to us. But all this evidence damns, but does
not convict, colloidal silver as a cause of argyria.
The most interesting, and disturbing, "fact" reported in this
presentation, is Chinnini's claim that:
"Figuring by molecular weights (from the article below, Silver-blue
nails), I once calculated that, at the dosage recommended of one
teaspoon per day, I would reach this cumulative level at three years
duration (using a 20ppm solution)."
And in a note to the "Silver-blue nails" article mentioned above:
"By my calculations, 15 grams of silver translates to 3 years of
additive use of "one teaspoon per day" of a 20 ppm solution."
I don't know whether this is the result of error, or a deliberate
attempt at deception, but there is no way I can figure that he has
done his "calculation" correctly.
***Tom, Jim and others, please check me on the following?!***
Firstly, ppm as we have been using it is milligrams per liter, or ppm
by weight. He claims to have calculated it by molecular weights, which
gives a different result.
A silver preparation of 20 milligrams per Liter would yield about 100
micrograms of silver per teaspoon. (Assuming 5 ml/tsp)
100 micrograms per day would yield only about 110 *milligrams* of
silver in three years! That's just over 1/10th of a gram!
Obviously he didn't take ppm to mean milligrams per liter!
So how about this molecular weight business??
Silver has an atomic weight of about 108. Water has a molecular
weight of 18. The ratio of molecular weights is 6:1.
So a preparation of twenty silver atoms per million water molecules
would have a *weight* relationship of:
108 x 20
-------------- = 120 x 10e-6 or 120 ppm by weight!
18 x 10e6
Okay, even taking a "20 ppm" solution to have 120 milligrams per
liter, one teaspoon of *this* would yield 600 micrograms of silver.
600 micrograms per day for three years would be 657 milligrams!
That's a bit over 1/2 a gram. More than I'd like to take, but still
*far* short of 15 grams!
So am I mistaken or is this fellow *way* off base?
I realize by now that I've probably lost 9 out of 10 of my readers
with all this ppm and molecular weight mumbo-jumbo. And that's what's
scary! I'm sure not 1 in 10 people visiting Chinnini's web site has
the training and inclination to analyse his disastrously flawed
reasoning.
They are going to go away believing terrible things about the
"dangers" of argyria from colloidal silver, and never even realize
they've been misled.
And, let me add, nowhere does he mention the evidence that small
particle colloidal silver is excreted by the body. He assumes that
every atom you ever ingest accumulates forever...
So, there you have it, folks! Some of the *best* evidence in support
of the colloidal silver argyria scare!
Please send me your comments? I would like to know how you react to
this article and/or to the above site.
Thank you,
Mike
[Mike Devour, Citizen, Patriot, Libertarian]
[[email protected] ]
[Speaking only for myself... ]
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