My Korean grandmother used to consume these little silver colored breath freshners (they look like silver bb-s). I recently found them in an Asian grocery store and looked at the company’s website - they are coated with real Silver! The company claims that the silver helps prevent virus infections, etc. Has anyone heard of this before? Also, what can consuming this silver do to your body?
JunrGatr
Probably not an issue. Hell, Goldschlager has fleck of gold in it.
Yeah, adam, but gold is extremely chemically non-reactive. It (I’m sure) just passes thru ya untouched. Silver, on the other hand, not so much. In fact, IIRC, I’ve repeatedly seen warnings NOT to eat silver-coated dragees (cake decorations).
Colloidal silver has long been pushed as a heal-all to those who like that kind of thing, but BigGiantHead is right. It does stay in the body. In fact, colloidal silver’s proponants claim that’s why it works.
So, as far as the OP goes, a little is probably OK, but I wouldn’t want too much. Don’t have any numbers for that, sorry.
*Handling
While silver itself is not considered to be toxic, most of its salts are poisonous. Exposure to silver (metal and soluble compounds, as Ag) in air should not exceed 0.01 mg/m3, (8-hour time-weighted average - 40 hour week). Silver compounds can be absorbed in the circulatory system and reduced silver deposited in the various tissues of the body. A condition, known as argyria, results with a grayish pigmentation of the skin and mucous membranes. Silver has germicidal effects and kills many lower organisms effectively without harm to higher animals. *
Silver is sometimes used to coat fancy indian dishes. It is sometimes used to coat pills. It is toxic to fish when it is dumped ( in the form of photo processing chemicals) into rivers and streams.
I found lots of info at: http://www.reach-for-life.com/prodinfo/colsil_iris.htm
No, you can’t eat Silver. The Lone Ranger had him shipped off and turned into Big Macs long ago.
Silver is, admittedly, more reactive than gold, but that’s not saying much. It’s still considered to be one of the “noble metals”, along with gold, copper, platinum, irridium, and a few too rare to even bother naming. I wouldn’t worry about pure silver too much, unless you’re a lycanthrope or something.
Silver compounds are a completely different story. In general, things that are stable in elemental form are unstable in compounds-- nitrogen is another example of this. This would explain why so many silver compounds are toxic.
Funny thing is, silver is considered to be a hazardous substance under federal and state environmental regulations. And if you dispose of it improperly, it is considered to be a hazardous waste.
Silliness. Fillings are silver. So you eat silver all the time, a small amount.
Plus, sterling silverware gives some silver when you eat it.
So that’s why that necklace gave me a rash!
I once read of an odd case of a movie producer who liked to chew on film scraps while he worked. He developed (pun intended) a purply-grey cast to his skin, as another poster mentioned. When he stopped chewing film, which contains silver nitrate, his skin returned to normal.
Gold, on the other hand, has often been marketed as an arthritis cure, usually as injected gold salts. I have wondered if some of Goldschlager’s appeal comes from this traditional quackery. No reliable evidence exists for gold’s effectiveness as an arthritis remedy.
those things taste soo terrible, i dont understand why you would want to eat them
Are they actually silver or are they called “silver” because of their color? I thought they were an amalgam of various things.
Phobos asks,
As did I. I believe fillings are mostly silver and mercury. In fact, this site claims silver fillings are 50% mercury. Whether this level of mercury in your mouth is dangerous or not is open to debate, but I don’t think anyone would care to argue that mercury itself isn’t dangerous. Thus, I think that handy’s contention that silver must be inherently safe, since fillings are silver, is incorrect.
yeah, they have a high level of mercury in them - the word amalgam is a special chemists word for an alloy containing mercury.
I saw a programme on TV (good source <not>) a while ago that quoted levels of mercury vapour due to fillings (depending on number of amalgam fillings in your mouth) in parts per million & it was fairly low,but people don’t know what the long term effects are as good dental care is relatively recent. However they did point out that going to the dentist and asking him to replace the fillings with the white fillings gives a much higher vapour level whilst it is being drilled out (albeit over a shorted period). Their conclusion was - is it needs updating anyway, ask for a non-amalgam one. If not leave it.
Sorry if I sound like I’ve swallowed a dictionary sometimes!
Oh & one of the reasons the silver salts are toxic to the fish is that the most common silver salt is Silver Nitrate (used in photography etc, light sensitive) and Nitrates are toxic to most animals & are absorbed through the skin - they would get into the bloodstream of the fishes very rapidly through the gills.