Dear peter crowcraft Welcome to our little zoo.
My motivation in writing the following is not to defend opinions, but to offer information which may be helpful to you and others. I am not a "scientist", or "health professional", although I have some low-level long-past training and experience in chemistry, physiology, and nursing. I will intersperse my responses through your original mail below, preceded by "JOH" to identify my response to hopefully sort if from your original post despite the manner various mail programs deal with threads of writing. James Osbourne, Holmes [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: poida [SMTP:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, May 16, 1999 10:22 AM To: [email protected] Subject: CS Electrochemistry - exactly what is CS? We have been reading this NG for a couple of weeks. May I make the following comments: 1. CS - whatever it is - is given as ppm. Since colloidal size can vary over two to three orders of magnitude this term is hardly exact! ug/ml would be better. Has anyone actually measured the CS size range? JOH 1. PPM in water is for all practical purposes the same as mg/L, since there are for all practical purposes 1000 grams in 1000 mL of water. The tiny discrepancy which exists dates back to some early measurment error in the SI calculation of the volume of I gram of water... or something like that. PPM itself tells little about the nature of the sol, since the properties of a colloid---or even the presence of a colloid---is dependent upon particle size. The terms "PPM" or mg/l, or any units are misleading because of this. Units of disperse phase medium per unit of dispersion medium tell you only the total amount of silver in the solution, and not much about its actions in the body. The larger pieces just go on through, excreted in the feces. My favorite example is a single 10 mg lump of silver in a liter of water. It is "10 mg/L" but not a colloid, and will very probably have no observable effect. Divide that same quantity of silver into sub-micron sized particles, and a very different situation arises. For starters, calculate the total surface area of silver created with 10 mg of Ag particles in the nanometer range. JOH 2. Yes, the particles are routinely measured. Unfortunately for us not-well-funded researchers, it costs about 150 Federal Reserve Accounting Unit Devices per look, using a transmission electron microscope. I am not familiar with the full range of particle sizes because I am focused on the silver made using a high-voltage alternating-current process. In that process, the particles can be in the range of one half of one billionth of a meter to about ten billionths of a meter. That is 0.5 nm to 10 nm. One can spend a bit of time looking at charts of particle sizes to get oriented to the relationships between milli, micro etc. Particle sizes do vary greatly. Much is too heavy to remain suspended by molecular motion and simply falls out as a grey dust at the bottom of the container. The color of the sol varies with particle size. Very fine sols are water-clear, even in relatively high concentrations. 2. CS cures I have read are all anecdote. JOH: Much of what is easily found is "unscientific" personal reports. There is, however, a large body of work by medical professionals and researchers. Silver compounds and colloids were very successful starting in the lat 1800s and to the 40's, when they were---some say without altruistic motivation---replaced by antibiotics created from various yeasts, and then by chemical synthesis. Look for Bergdorf and Robert Becker. One excellent starting point is: Colloidal Silver, A literature Review: Medical Uses, Toxicology and Manufacture. John W. Hill, DC. Available with a trick Adobe Acrobat download at www.wwmagic.com/clearlake. Mail: [email protected]. About 12 bux. Published in 1996. Now dated in some details, but great cites of older work. There is zero medical evidence that CS at 30 ppm say can cure anything or have any antiseptic effect. JOH: That is not so. You just have yet to find it. I cannot spend the time at present to direct you to all of the cites I have, but I may be able later. I need to get it all out the disordered files into a single list. There is much that I do not have but which is "out there". We all look forward to an ongoing study at BYU. Perhaps others on this list will share their documentation if you ask. One very well informed researcher--- Brooks Bradley ---prefers a concentration of only 5 mg/L. About the only orally ingested drug which can (and does) have an effect at these low levels is LSD. JOH: Silver is usually dosed in milligrams, not micrograms. 500 micrograms of Acid is a stiff dose. A typical dose of CS is hard to define, and I don't have time to calculate the relationships, but may in the future. I think you will find the silver doses quite larger. Do it yourself, or have your PhD friend do it. Just for reference, assume 1 oz of 10 mg/l and see how it works out. 3. But what actually is the electrochemistry of the CS production. JOH: Good question. Lots of people are working on that one. It is pretty techie. A chemistry friend who has a PhD in colloidal silver and palladium (using the Bredig process) has just tested two CS units he found had been purchased by his students. JOH: could you give me a more complete description of his degree(s) A PhD in silver and palladium is pretty specialized. What is his name? Can he be contacted? He tested them and here is what he found: In the first unit when the two Ag electrodes are placed in distilled water and a current drawn, the reactions occurring INITIALLY at the cathode and anodes are as follows: Cathode: H2O + 2e- ---> H2 gas + 2OH- Anode : Ag -----> Ag+ + e- Now in distilled water which will have a pH near neutrality or slightly lower (5-7) due to dissolbved CO2, the released Ag+ ion from the anode is stable in solution...BUT as the cathode reaction proceeds (and we see a gas given off) the pH of the medium increases since hydroxide ion is being released. Aqueous Ag+ ion is UNSTABLE at higher pH and begins to precipitate as the silver oxide This gives rise to a browny colour in the solution. Over the course of time it is entirely possible that some Ag+ (if sufficient remains in solution) may also make it to the cathode and also be reduced to form silver (though this generally manifests itself as a dendrites (these could also be silver oxide forming)). At any rate, I believe that silver oxide is responsible for the colouration we see (there could be some complex photochemistry operating as well but lets not complicate the issue)....at any rate, the manufacturers of this apparatus claim that Ag+ cannot be present ..this is bunk ...of course it is present other wise how else would the silver oxide form by precipitation as the pH rises?? To prove my point, we did an experiment with the second silver generator that was bought by my other student ....in contrast to the first apparatus which produced the BROWN solution, this one produced a CLOUDY WHITE solution and ALSO exhibited a high pH after 20 minutes or so of 9.3. Why the difference??? Well the manufacturers of the machine recommended the addition of common table salt (sodium chloride) to enhance conductivity! The white solid that thus formed was not silver oxide but SILVER CHLORIDE as this compound is relatively more insoluble than silver oxide and thus forms preferentially. It forms by simple reaction between Ag+ and Cl- in solution thus demonstrating reasonably conclusively the production of Ag+ during the electochemical process. JOH: This is old stuff. I am not familiar with the details because I am focused on making silver by a different process. Nonetheless, feel very confidant that I cured a serious case of tinea pedis with low voltage CS. Others report stunning success with a wide variety of conditions. Lyme is high on the list. Many "anecdotal" reports of cancer cures, well documented, but outside the "approved research" scam. JOH: I think much of the above is true, but is an incomplete picture. For example, what happens with the chloride is all consumed? Small particles of silver are produced, in all processes, as well as the other compounds. AgCl precipitates. Colloidal Ag. does not, by definition. I am over my head in this area, and you may get a response from some of the professional chemists on this list who can better address those details than myself. Please note, that your report is "anecdotal", just like the ones you are disparaging, and is presented entirely without supporting documentation, details of method, and scientific review by peers. What is very clear from these tests is that no Ag metal is produced. JOH: That may have been true in your friend's tests. It is not generally true. The idea that the electric current causes little bits of silver to jump off or dissolve from the silver electrode to silver colloidal particles in the distilled water is just wrong. JOH: That is false. You can measure the Ag present in a water clear sol, using wet chemistry and a Spectrophotometer. I do it routinely. Specialized texts are full of methods of electrically generating CS. There is lots going on that we do not know about. . The idea may be appealing but it is wrong electrochemically: it cannot happen. JOH: It does happen. What is being formed is silver oxide. JOH: Under some conditions some silver oxide is formed. And, depending on the purity of water, and many process variables, other stuff can be formed. Some settles out on the bottom of the container, while some remains suspended in solution. JOH: Not much AgCl remains in solution at all. It is, by the way, generally non toxic in the amounts produced. CS produced this way is dissolved Ag2O and suspended particles of Ag2O. It is certainly not metallic silver. 5. It must be noted that metallic silver and ionic silver are two completely different chemical states with completely different chemical properties. (Just like H2O is different to H2 or O2. And NaCl is completely different to sodium metal and chlorine gas.) Many of the CS sites do not make clear which silver state they are talking about. JOH: Yes, they do have different properties. Both are charged, but by different mechanisms. And yes, their behavior in the body is quite different. Ionic silver compounds can cause toxicity and argyria. CS---pure silver in pure water---cannot. JOH: Much of the information on CS sites is to defend commercial advantage, not illuminate. Metallic silver has no antiseptic properties and is not a trace element required by the body. JOH: Wrong. Fine Ag sol kills damn near every micro-organism. If the c ellular nuclear material is not contained within a nuclear membrane, the stuff is vulnerable. This is extremely well documented. Most Virons, bacteria, mycopolasms, and fungi are killed in about 6 minutes after contact. It is a trace element. Even the FDA acknowledges a nutritional requirement.. Ionic silver is a mild antisepitc but at much higher concentrations than 30 ppm (whatever that actually is.) Ionic silver is not required by the body. JOH: One of my greatest areas of interest is the difference between "ionic" silver, which I currently define as monoatomic "disssolved" silver exhibiting the valence charge of silver, and nonionic silver in small clusters each of which has a single positive charge not directly, at least, related to the valence of the individual atoms. It is called the "Zeta" charge and is a result of the interaction between the cluster and water. Both ionic and charged colloidal Ag is antiseptic, but not "mild". Very aggressive. The silver compounds such as AgNo3 are more aggressive, but more toxic. The physical chemistry of these processes is intimidating, even for the specialist. 6. No amount of CS as produced above could possibly cause argyria. JOH: I agree, certainly not any amount that could be consumed without drowning. General systemic argyria needs at lease 10 grams of ionic silver taken taken over 6 months. JOH: I don't know about that, but I believe some evidence indicates that certain compounds of silver could cause it in smaller quantities. 7. Eating mushrooms will give you more ionic silver than CS produced as above. JOH: I don't think so, but it might be more fun. Mushrooms did not cure my athlete's foot. Milk has a natural ionic silver content at about the same level as Ag2O produced in these CS cells. JOH: No. Putting CS in milk stops fermentation. If there was that much free silver already it would never rot. Have your PhD friend check out the method of Svedborg [high voltage AC]and those following who used his method, as contrasted with Bredig's [Direct current, various voltages]. It is entirely possible that your medical condition would benefit greatly from CS. I urge you to continue your investigation with an open mind. If you can get the info indicating that it cannot harm, you have little to loose by trying it. The FDA is not here to help us, but is the primary agent implementing the agendas of the pharmaceutical giants. They have a proven record of lies, disinformation, and suppression of cheap and effective therapies. About 3 to 5 % of approved drugs have proven benefits. Somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people---depending on how you interpret the statistics---die from "approved drugs" annually in this country alone. Side effects of legal drugs account for about 25 % of all deaths in developed countries. All with the approval of government. Good fortune in your search for truth. Look with the intent to understand and be willing to cope with a lot of disinformation. I hope that your condition continues to improve. End JOH peter crowcroft Cancer & Tumor Information Site http://kitsrus.com/pheo.html -- The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. To join or quit silver-list or silver-digest send an e-mail message to: [email protected] -or- [email protected] with the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the SUBJECT line. To post, address your message to: [email protected] List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]> -- The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. To join or quit silver-list or silver-digest send an e-mail message to: [email protected] -or- [email protected] with the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the SUBJECT line. To post, address your message to: [email protected] List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]>
