What should colloidal silver look like

But producers of ionic silver products will try to convince the buyer that their product is a silver colloid. The common thread in most advertisements selling ionic silver products labeled as colloidal silver is to claim that ions are silver particles, or they try to blur the distinction by using the terms interchangeably. Another common trick is to display images made from a Transmission Electron Microscope TEM that they claim shows the small particles found in their products.

These images do not show the silver particles in their products. Another ploy is the use of techno-babble, wherein make-believe technical sounding terms are used to impress the non-technical reader. In a related approach, advertising or labels will include scientific-sounding explanations that use terms from other fields of science that are not applicable to the chemistry of solutions and colloids.

For example, in the field of nuclear science, a particle is considered to be any atomic object whose weight is greater or equal to the weight of an electron. Attempting to define a silver ion as a particle by using this definition is the essence of what is commonly referred to as bogus science.

Silver protein products are the second most prevalent type of so-called colloidal silver products on the market. These products consist of a combination of metallic silver particles and a protein binder, and can easily be produced by simply adding water to silver protein powder sold by various chemical companies.

Most products claiming to be high concentrations of colloidal silver typically in the range of 30 to 20, ppm are in fact silver protein colloids. While some of these products are labeled as Silver Protein or Mild Silver Protein , many such products are simply labeled as colloidal silver and the word protein does not appear anywhere on the label or in the product advertising literature.

Silver protein products generally have very large silver particles , so large that they would not remain suspended as colloidal particles without protein additives. Protein additives help to keep the large particles from settling. While various protein binders may be used, the protein most commonly used is gelatin, which is made by boiling the skin, tendons, and ligaments of animals.

For large metallic silver particles to remain suspended in water, they need additional buoyancy to keep from sinking. Gelatin molecules will encapsulate each particle of silver and add enough buoyancy so that it does not sink to the bottom. The presence of gelatin creates a risk of bacteria and is one of the dangers of taking this product.

Of the three types of colloidal silver, silver protein products have the lowest particle surface area for a given silver concentration, making the silver inaccessible for safe human absorption and less effective for human use.

Particle surface area, as we will cover later, is the single most important determinant of colloidal silver effectiveness. True colloidal silver products are the least prevalent type of colloidal silver on the market due to high degree of manufacturing complexity and the resulting high cost of production. In true colloidal silver, the majority of the silver content is in the form of silver particles!

When referring to colloidal silver, the word colloid means silver particles. The two critical factors to look for in determining true colloids are:. Of all the types of silver marketed as colloidal, true colloidal silver products have the highest particle surface area.

High particle surface area is achieved by a high percentage of silver particles combined with very small sized particles. Of the three types of silver on the market, true silver colloids have the highest particle surface area relative to the total silver content.

Because these products are mostly ionic silver they are simply referred to as ionic silver. In order to determine if a silver product is true colloidal silver , the concentration of silver in nanoparticle form must be determined independently of the concentration of the silver ions present. Since most silver products contain both nanoparticles and ions a method of separating the ions from the nanoparticles was developed so that each component of the product could be determined.

At the time this work was being conducted no definitive method had yet been established to separate silver ions from silver nanoparticles. Theory would dictate that centrifugal separation should do the trick but not even the scientists at companies that produced the Ultra Centrifuges of the day knew what forces would be required to cause the separation.

Most laboratory centrifuges produce forces in the range of tens of thousands of G-forces. Ultra centrifuges produce forces of hundreds of thousands of G-forces ranging up to one million G-forces. After much trial and error, the scientists at CSL using an ultra-centrifuge capable of producing , G-forces determined the G-forces and time intervals required to separate silver ions from silver nanoparticles.

Part of this research involved determining when all the nanoparticles had been separated from the ions. This was accomplished using Dynamic Light Scattering DLS techniques that shine a powerful laser beam through the liquid and then count the individual photons that are reflected from the nanoparticles.

The reflected laser energy is processed using digital signal processing algorithms to perform an auto correlation function and Fast Fourier Transform FFT. When all the nanoparticles have been removed, the resulting output from the mathematical process will produce random noise. Should any nanoparticles be present, the mathematical process will produce a coherent output that is the result of the Brownian motion of the particles. This technique was of critical importance to knowing when all the nanoparticles had been removed by the ultra-centrifugation.

Once the nanoparticles were completely removed from the liquid, only the ions remained. It is the very high concentration of particles, not size or contamination, that gives our colloidal silver its distinctive coloration. Previously it was assumed that the dark color would indicate the presence of large silver particles. This is the case for colloidal silver where other production methods are used.

The very small particle size of Crystal colloidal silver is confirmed by using the most modern measuring methods, specially developed for measuring particles of this size. This makes these particles the smallest colloidal silver particles in any product on the market. Skip to content. My Crystal account. Track your order. What is the color of colloidal silver? What Colour is Colloidal Silver? A watery color indicates that it is not colloidal silver, but ionic silver.

After opening, the color of Crystal Silver may change to gray, depending on the atmospheric pollution present. This color change is not an indication of a problem with the product and is not a cause for concern.