Argyria and Colloidal Silver

When the new millennium was approaching, senatorial candidate Stan Jones decided that if antibiotics wouldn't be available after the new year, he'd have to do the next best thing. He started regularly ingesting a health compound to keep himself free of infections. Whether it did that is unknown, but it did have one unintended side effect- it turned him blue.

Argyria is a rare illness that causes the skin to turn gray, blue or bluish-gray. The condition is completely preventable because modern science knows exactly what causes it. Simply avoiding long-term ingestion of that substance prevents the condition. So why are people still being diagnosed with it?

Silver exposure is the root of argyria. Silver dust can be ingested over a long period of time by those who work around it. But more frequently, people voluntarily ingest silver in the form of colloidal silver. This is a liquid compound marketed as a health product. Colloidal silver briefly became popular during the Y2K frenzy as a few of the paranoid stocked up on the compound for a pending apocalypse and the lack of medical care that would follow. Other patients with argyria developed it because they weren't told about the side effects of medicines that contained silver. Silver nitrate was once a popular medication, being dispensed for hundreds of years before any ill effects were cataloged. Silver nitrate was still dropped into the eyes of infants up until the late 20^th century to prevent eye infections.

Argyria was more common in the early to mid-20^th century when colloidal silver was commonly found in nasal medications. The argyria cases that resulted from those medications led to colloidal silver being taken out of mainstream medications and the refusal of most pharmaceutical companies to use it in new medications. But, colloidal silver is still being marketed as a cure-all to prevent infections and to treat existing ones. The makers of these compounds usually tell their customers not to trust medical opinions about the risk of argyria and that not everyone who takes it gets the illness. It does take a long-term exposure before the effects are seen in the skin. But, long term can mean no more than a few months for some patients and several years for others.

Argyria isn't necessarily harmful to the body, though there is a lack of statistical data on the illness because of its rarity. The difference in skin color hasn't been shown to be harmful or to cause any other health problems, but it can cause physiological ones. Understandably, argyria sufferers often report having problems with being attracting unwanted attention or being too embarrassed to conduct their lives as they once did.