Stories tagged silver

A blue sculpture of a man: or a sculpture of a blue man?
Courtesy rbrwrOh, the things we learn from local news stations’ websites. Take this story, for example, brought to you by the hard-hitting news team of KVAL 13 out of Eugene, Oregon.

Due to their reported inability to be nice to him, Oregon is losing one of the world’s very few blue people to California. Typical – California gets everything (I’m thinking of the Wu-Tang Clan and Pauly Shore here). The blue man, one Paul Karason, is heading south in search of greener pastures, and he’s taking his condition with him.

The condition, known as argyria, is awfully rare, although not unheard of. Argyria is generally the result of ingesting too much colloidal silver (nano-sized particles of silver in liquid suspension). Colloidal silver is marketed as a dietary supplement, and many people (including Karason) believe it to be a sort of cure-all. Whenever your dealing with nano-sized particles, however, things are bound to get a little unusual, and colloidal silver’s actual ability to do any curing is perhaps debatable, although if turning your skin gray-blue is something you’re into, it may be the way to go. As silver particles deposit in the skin, as the internet has explained it to me, they begin to darken with exposure to sunlight (as in a silver emulsion photograph), resulting, in some people, in skin tones ranging from ashy to smurf. It doesn’t seem that there are any other significant health effects from colloidal silver consumption, although this site points out that silver is toxic (carcinogenic, in fact), and doesn’t actually play any role in the human body, and wikipedia mentions, as an aside, that extreme colloidal silver overdoses can lead to, ah, penile atrophy. I don’t know why this was an aside – it should have been the focus of the article.

It’s all certainly something to consider, isn’t it? Just last night I tried Goldschlager for the first time, hoping that it might turn me into a shining, golden man. And it did, in a way, but mostly it just turned my mouth kind of cinnamony, and my stomach kind of sour. That’s probably for the best, I suppose, because I’m not sure Minnesota could deal with a gold man any better than Oregon could deal with a blue one, and I’m not ready to move to California yet.

Tags : nanosilver, silver, quackery, argyria, blue

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Robin Low: What will he think about new regulations? Robin Low makes textiles using nanotechnology. Ask him what he thinks about these new regulations.

Nanotechnology research is kicking into full gear the world over but almost everyone agrees that we simply don't know how to properly regulate its use. What will particles billions of times smaller than a meter do to our bodies and the environment? Well...they might cure our cancers and clean up our water. But they also might penetrate our blood brain barriers and stick in our gray matter or cause ecosystems to decline due to tiny tiny pollutants.

EPA takes a step in the right direction

Well, at least our government is beginning to look at this stuff. The EPA announced on Thursday that they will be regulating all use of nano-silver in US commercial products. If you make odor eating socks with nano-silver you now have to make sure that it won't get out into the environment and cause harm.

The city of Berkeley, California is also looking at creating the first local government nanotech regulations. This isn't surprising for two reasons.

1. Berkeley has long history of being environmentally conscious and has a very active political community, often leading detractors and jokesters to dub this enclave The Socialist Republik of Berkeley
2. They actually play host to a great deal of research into nanotechnology at UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. They have a vested interest in protecting their communities from the potential harmful effects of nanotech research.

I will be watching this closely and hope that the concerned community members and the scientists can come to some middle ground where research isn't totally crippled by massive regulation but where unknown safety risks are considered.

Fun times in the nanoworld.

Tags : nanotechnology, regulation, health, nanosilver, silver, EPA, Berkeley

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