Talk:Argyria

Untitled
The Picture of the emaciated old man with Argyria and young man, claiming they were the same person, was not supported with any evidence, or references. I have removed it for this reason. And because they looked like they were from entirely different ethnic backgrounds.

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.

Blue Krishna
Lord Krishna, the blue-skinned Deity in Hindu mythology is described as having turned blue after consuming a quantity of poisoned river water in order to save humanity. Seeing as most myths have some grounding in real-life individuals, maybe Krishna could be mentioned as a possible high-profile argyria candidate? Throquzum (talk) 21:33, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't a person have to have fair-coloured skin for this to be so noticeable?

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.

-I corrected the untruth posted that laser treatment has been able to "treat it with satisfactory cosmetic results". Euphemism? I think so (links support this claim, and others I made). It is clear the person responsible for posting this is downplaying anything that makes silver seem not as dangerous, and playing up anything that makes it sound like it is dangerous. This person is a simply disingenuous.

You want references? Here you go: http://archderm.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1688058 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3870229/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21595676

How about reference material for the claims made attached to the image at the top of the page, with the young boy, and the emaciated old man with Argyria? Where are the links to support that claim? I have seen none. Please support this, or I will remove that image, and the text associated.

origin of argyria, "rare"
Claims that argyria may only occur after ingestion of silver compounds and not after ingestion of elemental 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 "rare" as both unreferrenced and meaningless. If you ingest enough silver, you can develop argyria. Pustelnik (talk) 17:17, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I am not an silver salesperson. I read the article as it was a few days ago and was astounded at the outright lies it contained; claims that 'The Blue Man' took silver because of fears of Y2K, which are completely false; the reference source given does not even state this. I have supplied an alternative, FACTUAL link as to why 'The Blue Man' took silver solutions. Claims that Argyria is common were present in this article before I made an edit a few days ago. That is 100% FALSE. There are millions of people currently using colloidal silver world-wide - including myself - and almost none of them ever contract Argyria. I rewrote that, addressing Argyria as rare, as there are few if any new cases ever year, with millions consuming colloidal silver annually. Research has shown that to develop Argyria, the average person would have to ingest at least 4 full grams of silver in a relatively short period of time. This research is from the 1930's, and crude, less-safe forms of silver were used. To ingest 4 grams using a 10ppm solution - as leading brands are so concentrated nowadays - would require one to ingest roughly 20,000 liters. Some people were less prone to developing Argyria, and did not develop it till up TWENTY grams of pure silver were ingested; from cure, less safe solution than are nowadays available; and predominate the market. The maximum recommended daily dose of true colloidal silver is 7 tablespoons (350mcg of silver), and taking this amount, it would be almost impossible to develop Argyria, even taking the maximum dose every day of one's adult life.

"Gaul and Staud (1935) reported 70 cases of generalized argyria following organic and colloidal silver medication, including 13 cases of generalized argyria following intravenous silver arsphenamine injection therapy and a biospectrometric analysis of 10 cases of generalized argyria classified according to the quantity of silver present. In the i.v. study, data were presented for 10 males (23-64 years old) and for two females (23 and 49 years old) who were administered 31-100 i.v. injections of silver arsphenamine (total dose was 4-20 g) over a 2- to 9.75-year period. Argyria developed after a total dose of 4, 7 or 8 g in some patients, while in others, argyria did not develop until after a total dose of 10, 15 or 20 g. In the biospectrometric analysis of skin biopsies from 10 cases of generalized argyria, the authors confirmed that the degree of the discoloration is directly dependent on the amount of silver present. The authors concluded that argyria may become clinically apparent after a total accumulated i.v. dose of approximately 8 g of silver arsphenamine. The book entitled "Argyria. The Pharmacology of Silver" reached the same conclusion, that a total accumulative i.v. dose of 8 gm silver arsphenamine is the limit beyond which argyria may develop (Hill and Pillsbury, 1939). However, since body accumulates silver throughout life, it is theoretically possible for amounts less than this (for example, 4 g silver arsphenamine) to result in argyria. Therefore, based on cases presented in this study, the lowest i.v. dose resulting in argyria in one patient, 1 g metallic silver (4 g silver arsphenamine x 0.23, the fraction of silver in silver arsphenamine) is considered to be a minimal effect level for this study."

Also, no distinction is made throughout the entire article between crude silver solutions - such as 'The Blue Man' was taking, silver chloride, silver proteins, versus true particulate nano-silver and silver hydrofoil that now predominate the market; which are proven to be effective anti-microbial agents. This is disingenuous, and the difference between the different kinds of silver solution should be given credence, and close attention. The fact that this is not clearly stated shows a will to obfuscation.

The person that removed my reference to the Oligodynamic Effect wikipedia article (who has removed all of my other edits) has no basis in doing so, other than to mask supported factual information that silver is, for a fact, a potent anti-microbial agent. Here are some highly relevant pieces of information from that article that make it clear that this should be linked as source material in the Argyria article, which in its current state is not much more than an anti-silver scare-piece, written to fool people that have no understanding of silver, and how it may be beneficial - who come to Wikipedia in order to educate themselves on the matter:

"Silver is capable of rendering stored drinking water potable for several months. For this reason, water tanks on ships and airplanes are often "silvered".[4] Silver compounds such as silver sulfadiazine are used externally in wound and burn treatments.[5] Silver nanoparticles, obtained by irradiating a silver nitrate solution with an electron beam, are effective bactericides, destroying gram-negative species immune to conventional antibacterial agents.[6] Silver-coated medical implants and devices have been shown to be more resistant to biofilm formation.[7] Silver nitrate has been shown to be effective in inhibiting the development of the herpes simplex type 1 virus though it is largely ineffective against type 2.[8]"

"Certain metals, such as silver, copper and copper alloys, are known to be far more poisonous to bacteria than others, such as stainless steel and aluminium, which is why they are used in mineral sanitizers for swimming pools and spas."

Wikipedia should be a balanced source of information dissemination, not a whore to be used to coerce fools into believing misleading or untruthful information posted by people with questionable understanding of the issue, whose motives are unclear. I write this not as a 'silver salesman' - as the other poster blithely supposes - but as someone who has suffered greatly with debilitating health problems that were only significantly affected by using colloidal silver; when all other remedies tried failed. If you people think there is no 'proof' silver does anybody any good, then why are droves of individuals posting positive results on alternative health forums, more main-stream sites, and in the review sections of websites that sell silver - where you can only post if you have in fact bought the product.

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 (HAHAHA XD) (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)


 * I'm just saying, this seems a lot more pleasant than getting a tattoo, with fewer risks. I don't look good blue, but if'n I did... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.72.21.221 (talk) 00:20, 25 March 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)

What studies? Why aren't the results of the studies ever described. Do they even exist. All I can see once all the yelling is filtered out is that benign accumulations of silver occur in parts of the body and the skin takes on a grayish tint. Oh, and big pharma might not make as much money. What exactly are the "disastrous effects of exposure to silver colloids"? How come they are never described? Usually when the argument degenerates to histrionics, somebody has a monetary interest in the outcome---are you working for a pharmaceutical? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.251.57.57 (talk) 23:44, 29 August 2011 (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. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.89.9.242 (talk) 04:32, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * That would be Stan Jones. Stonemason89 (talk) 01:57, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Silver Toxicity
Silver intoxication - Argyria - http://coseinteressanti.altervista.org/gold_silver.pdf

References in History Section
There seems to be a couple of paragraphs full of stated facts in the History section without a single reference. It would be nice to see some of these statements backed up with some evidence of their factuality.

What the machnism of turning blue
You didnt contain the most important information what is: why exactly skin turns blue, what is the biological mechanism of that? I'm not medicine doc so I dont know wheter the mechanism is known. But I would be really curiouse what are the hypothesis —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.151.115.9 (talk) 09:53, 22 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Silver is deposited under the skin as nanoparticles, which are as a rule much darker in color than bulk silver (and often bluish, as well). Stonemason89 (talk) 17:57, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * My understanding is that the silver particles tarnish eventually, exactly like silver trophies etc will tarnish, and this results in the grey colour. If you have enough partcles concentrated in a particular patch of skin, the dark colour becomes visible from the outside. Wdford (talk) 07:25, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Both may be true; the article on silver nanoparticles states: While frequently described as being 'silver' some are composed of a large percentage of silver oxide due to their large ratio of surface to bulk silver atoms. So you're probably right. Stonemason89 (talk) 01:52, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Does this protect against sunburns?
Could silver work as a replacement for melanin, perhaps in people with albinism (or simply people who have the misfortune of being fair-skinned and thus more prone to sunburns and skin cancer)? I know it looks "weird" (grey, or blue-grey, instead of brown). But if the only other option is to risk getting (potentially deadly) melanoma, then maybe it wouldn't be so bad? Not that I would consider taking it myself, mind. Stonemason89 (talk) 19:53, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Pictures, eyes
WTH? If this is to protect their identity, there are other ways. They look like right out of a zombie movie. At least explain that in the labels...--Cyberman TM (talk) 18:53, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, it's terrifying. 38.105.101.2 (talk) 19:07, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I must also agree - the black circles are explained in the captions now, but the images themselves are still unnerving - I'd say horrifying, personally, don't ask me why. Can this be changed to a black box spanning both eyes instead? A black rectangle seems to be reasonably standard for identity protection in other articles... and it won't be as freaky. (Note: I did consider that the circles were intentional, to show more of the face, but I don't see any noticeably worse discoloration in the areas that would be covered by a box, so hopefully it doesn't make a difference to the illustration. 76.177.42.68 (talk) 06:13, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I agreed with the "sheesh, that's scary" sentiment and took about twenty seconds to add the bars the last guy was talking about. I have no idea how to add images to Wikipedia and I don't care enough to find out, so have fun with this http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/4711/argyria2.jpg 71.77.16.233 (talk) 03:15, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Intentionally causing Argyria
I believe this article needs more information on the exact amounts needed to ingest daily to successfully cause argyria without poisoning oneself too much. Some of us actually want this and the lack of information on this subject is disappointing... 72.133.52.39 (talk)

I believe the cancer article needs more information on the exact amount of carcinogens needed to ingest daily to successfully cause benign tumors. Some of us actually want this and the lack of information on this subject is disappointing... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.4.173.18 (talk) 03:27, 28 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Look at this passive agressive liberal fucker. 181.43.151.106 (talk) 07:02, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Vandalism (made up myth)
I removed the following paragraph

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Argyria&action=historysubmit&diff=474599148&oldid=467650172

because (for multiple reasons), this "myth" is almost certainly vandalism. (For example, Athena was a virgin.) If not, some reference of that myth in the corpus of greek mythology could have been found.

The paragraph in question had been introduced via the following edit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Argyria&diff=prev&oldid=444105158

That user's only contributions were three edits to this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.136.60.53 (talk) 16:29, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

csfacts website
The website http://www.csfacts.com/pages/jones.html is used four times in the bit about Stan Jones. Is there any evidence that this is a reliable source for anything? It seems to be just a collection of largely pro-silver ingestion commentary and advertisements for cs products. If nobody objects I will remove it as a source and replace what I can from the abc and telegraph stories which are reliable.Desoto10 (talk) 03:20, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Picture
The picture being used here is extremely misleading if it is indeed true that Argyria causes no peripheral symptoms. At the very least, someone needs to explain why the man in the picture is severely malnourished if not for the Argyria. Otherwise, let's find a depiction of a different person suffering from the disease. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.40.69.215 (talk) 20:04, 25 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I removed the image. You're right, there's no good reason to be using that specific image.  It's akin to using a gunshot victim's image in an article about zits; there's no stated correlation between the argyria and the much more noticeable poor health of the individual in general.  There's nothing to explain any possible relation between the two symptoms (and I've seen nothing to state that they would be linked elsewhere), so I've removed it as a poor good faith attempt to provide a free use image.  Some other editor might be interested in finding a replacement. Human.v2.0 (talk) 22:58, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Lead definition could be clarified
What is "inappropriate" exposure to silver? Is this too little silver or too much? Or indeed is any level of exposure to silver inappropriate? Evidently from the rest of the article it results from too much silver... so why not just say that? Lesion ( talk ) 23:43, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

JAMA Dermatology 2015
Research Letter | June 2015 Colloidal Silver: Dangerous and Readily Available Griffith R, Simmons BJ, Abyaneh M, Bray FN, Falto-Aizpurua LA, Nouri K. JAMA Dermatol. 2015;151(6):667-668. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2015.120. http://archderm.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=2214158 --Nbauman (talk) 05:33, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Disputed
I have added a disputed tag because certain sections seem to be non-neutral and have factual errors. In particular, the second-to-last paragraph in Pathophysiology and the first paragraph about Stan Jones in Society & Culture — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.184.141.232 (talk) 12:58, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that statements about "careful use"violate NPOV. If there is a pharmacological toxicity threshold at which adverse effects appear then it is proper to state what is the dose range below that that threshold.  "Careful" is medically useless terminology. "Careful" is very subjective and some of the blue-tinted people insist they were being careful.  I also agree the paragraph about Stan Jones is problematic but it is not apparent what is factually incorrect.  I object to language that states that "Jones continues to promote silver" based on a reference from 2002.  This is a historical anecdote and should be described and referenced as such.Lapabc (talk) 20:43, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
 * You can object to "continues" more concretely based on WP:RELTIME, and I've altered the statement to avoid present tense accordingly (as well as a couple of other, similar cases). Mathglot (talk) 07:57, 25 January 2016 (UTC)