Is colloidal silver safe? What the published research says

It's a fair question, and one we're asked often: is Colloidal Silver actually safe to take? The short answer is yes, when it's properly made and used as directed. But you shouldn't have to take our word for it. Below is a plain look at what independent researchers have found, along with the real story behind the argyria scare you may have read about.

First, what we're talking about

Much of the confusion around silver comes from lumping very different substances together. Modern, electrically generated ionic colloidal silver is not the same thing as the silver nitrates, chlorides, salts and protein compounds that caused problems in the past. Our silver is 99.999% pure ionic silver at 10 ppm, with a particle size of 1 to 5 nanometres, and nothing else added. That distinction matters for everything that follows.

What the research has found

Nanosilver is not new, and it's well understood

It's easy to assume that anything with "nano" in the name was invented last week. It wasn't. In a 2011 paper in Environmental Science & Technology titled "120 Years of Nanosilver History: Implications for Policy Makers", researchers Bernd Nowack, Harald Krug and Murray Height traced more than a century of silver being used and regulated across water treatment, medicine and antimicrobial products. Their point to regulators was simple: silver at this scale has a long, well-documented safety record, and a change in terminology doesn't make it a mysterious new substance.

A human study on daily silver intake

One of the more thorough looks at people, not petri dishes, came from the University of Utah. In a study led by Mark Munger and published in the journal Nanomedicine in 2014, 60 healthy volunteers took commercial nanoscale silver solutions (10 and 32 ppm) over several exposure periods. The researchers ran metabolic panels, blood counts, urine analysis, physical examinations and even MRI scans of the chest and abdomen. They found no clinically significant changes across any of those measures. Silver was detectable in the blood, as you'd expect, but it produced no meaningful harm to the systems they tested.

Toxicity testing to formal guidelines

A 2011 study in the Journal of Veterinary Medical Science by Pattwat Maneewattanapinyo and colleagues at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand put colloidal silver nanoparticles through standard OECD safety tests for oral, eye and skin exposure. Even at an oral dose of 5,000 mg/kg, they observed no deaths and no toxic signs, and no significant differences in blood chemistry or organ tissue between the treated and control groups. In their words, the lethal dose sat above the highest amount they tested.

The argyria question, answered honestly

Argyria is the one thing people have usually heard about: a cosmetic condition where silver deposits in the skin give it a greyish tint in sunlight. It's real, but it's worth understanding where it actually comes from.

The definitive early work on this was a 1939 book, Argyria: The Pharmacology of Silver, by William Hill and Donald Pillsbury of the University of Pennsylvania. Reviewing the historic cases on record, they found the condition was tied to silver nitrates and silver protein compounds taken in large amounts over long periods, not to properly made colloidal silver. Notably, they described the absence of other health problems in affected people as "impressive": the effect was cosmetic, not a threat to health.

The famous modern cases follow the same pattern. The "Blue Man", Paul Karason, drank around a litre of home-made silver solution a day for 14 years, at several hundred ppm, with salt added to speed up production. That's roughly 200 times the daily limits the US EPA suggests. None of these cases involved a properly manufactured, low-ppm ionic product used sensibly. You can read more about them, and see our own lab results, on our lab testing and safety page.

Our own testing

Alongside the published research, every batch of our silver has its strength tested in-house, and our formulation has been independently checked by NZ Labs, whose 2008 microbiological challenge testing recorded a full kill rate on all tested organisms within 4 minutes. The point of all of it, ours and everyone else's, is the same: quality and sensible use are what keep silver safe.

The sensible-use summary

Common sense applies to anything you take. Using extremely high concentrations or very large amounts for long stretches isn't necessary and isn't recommended. Used as directed, at a normal dose, our Colloidal Silver has an excellent safety profile backed by both independent research and our own lab testing. If you'd like the practical side, see how to use Colloidal Silver and dosage.

Disclaimer: The information provided on this site is not intended to give medical advice for any illness or disease. It should not be construed as medical guidance. Our products are trace mineral supplements and not pharmaceuticals. They are not intended to replace medical diagnosis, medications, treatment, or advice. Use as directed, and if symptoms persist, consult your health care professional.