Talk:Argyria

Some of the text in this article was originally copied from http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/phs146.html which as a work of a U.S. Federal Government agaency without any other copyright notice should be in the public domain.

NPOV in intro paragraph?

The current intro paragraph reads like something written by a colloidal silver salesman:

"The condition is believed to be permanent, but laser therapy may be helpful. Most recent cases are due to the consumption of home-made silver products, and almost all of these cases, in turn, involved production techniques which are generally considered incorrect by colloidal-silver producers."

No references. Just a claim that sufferers were doing something wrong, implying that "professionally" made CS is safe.

you are right. no reference given.

origin of argyria, "rare"

Claims that argyria may only occur after ingestion of silver compounds and not after ingestion of elementar silver or silverdusts are false. Many articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals demonstrate it clearly. If needed, i can leave a list of articles or links to them on this page. Redecke 13:04, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC) I'll work on it. Pub Med has dozens, well-researched and published in peer-reviewed journals. I removed the phrase "extremely rare" as both unreferrenced and meaningless. If you ingest enough silver, you can develop argyria. Pustelnik (talk) 17:17, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Blue-gray skin and that's it?

That actually sounds cool. I'm surprised it isn't a popular body-modification trend.

That's it? What about DYING? That probably accounts for the unpopularity of purposely contracting argyria. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.200.157.132 (talk) 03:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Even too much water can kill you (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication) but it seems silly to call silver a poison simply because it turns your skin blue-grey. After all if skin colour is the only factor why not call skin that has been tanned bronze-brown by the suns light a discolouration or medical condition caused by too much melanin to be deposited in the skin due to exposure to the sun’s radiation? You could call it melaninitis and then say that people who get a tan purposely contract this condition :D

For this reason I would recommend removing silver from the Toxic metals section in Wikipedia’s Poisoning and Toxicity template (which is where I came to this article by the way). While it may be able to kill you in sufficiently high quantities, so can other metals like iron, copper etc. which are even necessary in human physiology in proper quantities. Only metals that are inherently toxic even in low quantities like lead, cadmium etc. should be there.

-24.226.49.141 (talk) 14:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

some references

Concerning the minimal amount of silver (to ingest) for becoming argyric:

Scientific refenrences:

argyria may occur after ingestion of 1.4 gr of silver over several month (silver nitrate in one particular case), 1.5 gr of silver within 14 days, up to 124 gr after 9 years and 200 gr after 10 month. (see Hill 1939, Wadhera 2005). Some scientist believes that argyria may come up after ingestion of only 1 gr silver (national health administration of Canada). Research on 70 cases of argyria by Gaud und Staud (1935) showed that the minimal amount of silver that induced argyria was 1.8 grams. Hill und Pillsbury think in 1939 that a total dose of 1 - 8 gr of inhaled silver dust may induce argyria and they say: ..The minimum amount of silver known to cause argyria in adults, from the use of any silver compound (including salts) is 900 mg of silver taken orally in one year". US-EPA writes: argyria is believed to occur at a total body burden of approximately 1 g Ag and above (EPA-440/4-81-017 (1981) 160 p).

People eating a huge number of Jintan Silver Pills breath freshener, a herbal product with silver coat 0,1 mg Ag / pill (at least 10 cases known and published in scientific journals) got argyria.

Local argyrosis cccured after: long time use of acupuncture-needles (Tanita 1985, Suzuki 1993, Takeishi 2002, Yamashita 2001) silvercontaining suture material silver earrings (van den Nieuwenhuijsen IJ 1988, Hendricks 1991, Sugden 2001) [4] silver "tattoo" around teeth, (seldom) after drilling work on silver amalgam fillings eye-argyrosis occured secondary to occupational silver soldering Redecke 00:39, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

The anonymous editor (you?) to this sentence, just striking what's overstricken here, made no sense:

• " Studies in rats show that drinking water containing very large amounts of silver (9.8 grams of silver per U.S. gallon water or 2.6 grams per liter) is likely to be life-threatening."

Of course, the sentence before then made no sense either. It would need not only the concentration of that solution, but how much of the solution at that concentration was ingested, to make any sense.

I have no problem if you take the whole thing out, pending provision of a source for the information, and the relevance of threatening the life of rats to the discussion at hand. Gene Nygaard 01:00, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

what i want to say is: we are not rats. and indeed: a concentration makes no sense of course. i do not know who wrote sentence that first... argyria is not life-threatening. we should talk about toxicology of silver on silver and not here. michael Redecke 02:15, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

argyria.info is full of lies

I find it utterly sick that www.Argyria.info is one of the external links provided. The site is a dis-information site by peddlers of colloidal silver made in an attempt to cover up the dangers of their quack medicine. The FDA has found that though effective concentrations of silver colloids are not safe, and safe concentrations are not effective.

The site gives next to no information about argyria; the entire page is one ranting defense of colloidal silver raising FUD about how "they" don't want you to know about it. It has no bibliography, and lacks any academic credibility; it is no better than a personal rant.

If anyone here remembers the bad old days when silver colloids poisoned our rivers due to dumping by the photographic film industry (back before digital photography decimated the industry), you would remember the disasterous effects of exposure to silver colloids. This is not to say that silver particles don't inhibit bacterial growth: they do, but it is erroneous to extrapolate from this and think that you can ingest silver colloids and have the same effect. Alcohol also kills bacteria, but if you inferred that you could ingest alcohol and kill bacterial infections, you'd be eligible for the Darwin award. The concentrations of alcohol that you'd have to ingest to kill an infection would kill you first. The same applies to colloidal silver. All support for medicinal use of colloidal silver out there comes from anecdotal accounts, but double-blind medical studies and health disasters such as poor victims of silver medicine quackery blow away any notion that silver medicine is safe nor effective.

Hello Berkana ! website argyria.info is owned by a well known colloidal-silver selling company in Utopia/Texas. Redecke 12:38, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, BS. Colloidal silver IS effective. It might not be safe and we have much better choices these days, but it still is effective. 87.94.56.151 (talk) 22:47, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Clarification: Colloidal silver is effective topically. 87.94.56.151 (talk) 23:04, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

argyria reversal

Source #1, the link about argyria reversal, is a dead link. Someone should fix this. Gary (talk) 02:19, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

It can't be permanent can it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.72.21.221 (talk) 03:07, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Video footage of an EXTREME sufferer:

Wow! Another colloidal silver enthusiast turns blue. This is the most extreme case I've heard of:

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=5573716&ch=4226726&src=news

SteveBaker (talk) 16:23, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Logtim blog from another "(dis)satisfied user" of colloidal silver products:

http://www.together.net/~rjstan/rose1.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by JMBrouillet (talk • contribs) 19:38, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Are there any pictures of people with this condition? I vaguely recall a US politician or celebrity having this condition.