Colloidal silver

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

This week I had the rare pleasure of interviewing Anders Sultan, Sweden’s largest colloidal silver manufacturer, maker of the Ionosil brand of colloidal silver

In the interview below we discuss the surprise European ban on colloidal silver…a nifty loophole that savvy European colloidal silver manufacturers are using to beat the ban…why American colloidal silver-makers may not be able to use this same loophole should colloidal silver be banned here...the looming Codex Alimentarius threat to global health freedom and how it will affect colloidal silver users in the U.S…the ongoing environmentalist campaign to force the regulation and restriction of colloidal silver in the United States…the little-known U.S. war on silver dragees…differences between U.S. and EU food, water and supplement regulations as they relate to colloidal silver….and much more!

So kick back for the next five or ten minutes, get comfortable, put your feet up, and read what you’re not being told about colloidal silver through any other source of information…

Barwick: Anders, it’s great to talk to you. Our readers are interested in knowing about what’s going on with colloidal silver in Europe. Can you tell me a bit about the EU colloidal silver ban?

Sultan: January first 2010 marked the day when colloidal silver was effectively banned as a food supplement in the European market.

Barwick: A lot of people here in the U.S. don’t believe the ban is real. They say they can’t find any information about it on the internet, and they note that some European vendors are still selling colloidal silver on their web sites.

Sultan: The fact that silver was not on the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) list of approved minerals in food supplements was known by only a few well initiated manufacturers. Most didn’t even know what was happening, and apparently some still don’t.

Barwick: Tell me more about this EFSA list.

Sultan: The EFSA has a list of approved food supplement ingredients, called the Positive List, and a list of unapproved food supplement ingredients. Colloidal silver was on the unapproved list, which is the list of food supplement ingredients that can no longer be legally sold in the EU as of January 1, 2010.

Any ingredient on that list was required to submit detailed and costly scientific and medical studies in order to be moved to the Positive List. Most colloidal silver manufacturers simply missed it. The lists were not that well publicized.

Barwick: Didn’t some colloidal silver manufacturers know about it, and if so, why didn’t they submit studies in support of their colloidal silver product?

Sultan: Yes, of course. Some knew about it. Many of these manufacturers simply couldn’t afford to do the safety, efficacy and bioavailability studies, which can cost in the range of $120,000 apiece.

Others, including big colloidal silver companies like Natural-Immunogenics, say they couldn’t get any cooperation from the EFSA. They couldn’t get the EFSA to provide the study protocols.

In short, it appears to me, and to other observers, that the EFSA had set out to make it extremely hard to get silver approved. The EFSA had already indicated that, because of undefined "safety issues" they would not automatically approve a nano-particle based colloidal silver product even if it were able to submit good bioavailability data.

Barwick: So the European Food Safety Authority seems to have had it out for colloidal silver products. They didn’t want to see such products make the Positive List. Is that your take on the matter?

Sultan: Correct. As you know, colloidal silver is probably first on Big Pharma's list of natural alternatives to get rid of. The structure of the EU makes it ridiculously easy for the pharmaceutical giants to "influence" a few key people and produce big results throughout Europe.

Big Pharma has obviously been successful this round and they have been at it for a while now. The European Food Supplement Directive, FSD 2002/46/EC, is nothing but a Big Pharma job which effectively limits the consumer’s access to nutrients in the form of minerals and vitamins.

This directive serves as a model for the WHO Codex Alimentarius that, through the process of “harmonization” of food supplement laws, will soon be forced onto US consumers, whether they want it or not.

Note that besides silver, other important minerals such as vanadium and the macro-mineral sulfur were also on the unapproved list, and have been banned along with a hundred or so other nutritional supplement ingredients.

Barwick: How many nutritional supplements does this affect?

Sultan: There’s probably a thousand or more different nutritional supplements using these ingredients that are now completely illegal to sell.

Barwick: And these aren’t just obscure minerals and vitamins that have been banned, right?

Sultan: Not at all. For example, as I mentioned, the macro mineral sulfur is on the banned list. The fact that the macro mineral sulfur is now illegal to sell is incomprehensible!

A lesser known trace element may be easy for an authority to state that it is not used in the body -- just like they play the game with silver by claiming it’s not an essential nutrient. But to ban a macro mineral is just plain criminal and would be like banning calcium or magnesium.

Sulfur is an essential macro mineral used for such various tasks as creating and maintaining skin, nails, hair, bone, muscles etc and is involved in the disulfide bonds that create 3D-structure in the molecules. Without sulfur you would most likely be spending your days as a 2-dimensional creature flat on the floor!

Barwick: Where can people go to learn more about the ban on silver?

Sultan: The EFSA is supposed to have this information published publicly on the internet. But the internet link describing in detail the situation with colloidal silver ends up in an “http 404 - file not found” message. I personally remarked to EFSA on this two times a couple of months ago -- without any result. They never fixed the broken link. They obviously don’t want people to find out what’s been going on behind the scenes.

Barwick: Why are they doing this?

Sultan: Big Pharma hates silver. Pure and simple. It’s too competitive. It allows the little guy a way of taking care of infectious illness without using pharmaceutical drugs.

On the broader level, Big Pharma and the ruling elite know extremely well that the less nutrition a consumer gets his hands on, the more prone he is to become malnourished and end up at a doctor's office with symptoms of some disease that requires prescription drugs.

Doctors are not educated in diagnosing disease as a result of malnourishment, which is the cause of more and more forms of illness and disease today. This in turn generates more and more revenue for Big Pharma.

It was early in the twentieth century that the owners of today’s multinational drug companies started to understand that the less nutrition you give to people the likelier they are to develop some form of disease that would require medication.

They also had control over companies that worked with the newly developed chemical fertilizers and they soon recognized the fact that if sulfur and other crucial elements were removed from the fertilizer products, food would not be as nutritious as before and people would develop symptoms of disease more often.

Again, this would generate more revenue to the pharmaceutical companies. As a result, sulfur as well as most other elements were removed from most of the fertilizer products leaving only three minerals -- nitrate, phosphorous and potassium, NPK.

Nature doesn’t work with three elements only. In order for crop growth to take place the way it was designed to, the crops need access to small amounts of natures 90+ elements.

These elements were once available in the soil and are continuously consumed by the crops growing in the soil. But since none of these elements are returned to the soil when fertilized with NPK, the soil itself ends up totally devoid of all of these elements in only about 10 years of farming.

Barwick: What’s the solution?

Sultan: The solution to the problem can be found in the ocean. You see, what isn’t consumed by the crops is transported through the process of erosion out into the ocean, where it can now be found as an ionic mixture that can actually be used to fertilize the soil or even be used as a cost effective and easily absorbable ionic food supplement.

An American company called Ocean Grown in Florida has developed a process which extracts natures 90+ elements out of the ocean so that it may be used to remineralize the soil. You can learn more at www.oceangrown.com.

Barwick: Back to the silver ban. What about other companies? Didn't anybody try to get their products listed on the Positive List?

Sultan: Yes. I mentioned Natural-Immunogenics earlier. They’re an American colloidal silver manufacturer. But they sell their product on the European market as well. They tried to get their product approved, but they had unfortunately made the mistake of trying to convince EFSA that their product is a nano-particulate product when in reality they have a 99 percent ionic product.

In my opinion, it would have been better to remain with the ionic story, as the safety data for ionic silver is much more comprehensive and does not automatically raise red flags with the authorities. At any rate, from what I can gather Natural-Immunogenics got no cooperation from the EFSA, and were never able to complete their bioavailability study. 

Barwick: So what are colloidal silver manufacturers going to do?

Sultan: The ban on silver has forced European vendors to find new ways of classifying the product. One obvious and appropriate classification is as a “water disinfectant” product.

Barwick: Why?

Sultan: Because it’s not considered to be a food supplement if it’s being used as a water disinfectant. You’re using it for water purification, rather than for mineral supplementation.

Since a typical 10 ppm colloidal silver solution is 99.999% water and only 0.001% silver, there are numerous other uses for a product like this.

For example, in regards to my own company, Ion Silver, we decided it wasn't worth the cost and effort to try to keep our colloidal silver product as a food supplement. We knew the deck has been stacked against colloidal silver manufacturers from the start. So we chose to reclassify the product as a water disinfectant instead, and move away from the stupid restraining rules surrounding food supplements.

We had built the colloidal silver market here in Sweden, and we knew that as long as we could keep the product legal somehow, people would continue to use it. What’s more, by re-classifying it as a water disinfectant, we can finally legally claim that the product is capable of killing bacteria, virus, fungus and one celled parasites - without risking spending a year in prison for making claims.

Barwick: So re-labeling your product as a “water disinfectant” is basically a loophole that allows you to continue selling colloidal silver legally, as long as you sell don’t tell people how to use it for food supplement purposes?

Sultan: Yes. That’s right. Most health food stores in Sweden already sell products used for water purification and have no problem with continuing to carry our colloidal silver product, called Ionosil, now that we’ve reclassified it as a water disinfectant.

In reality, the product is identical to what we had registered as a food supplement for the past nine years. It is only the label that has changed ever so slightly.

Of course, silver has been used for water purification purposes ever since king Cyrus boiled all his water and stored it in silver lined vessels while traveling around and fighting various wars.

Our product, Ionosil, is registered with the Swedish chemical authorities. The authorities keep a watchful eye on silver nitrate based products, but had no problem with a product that is composed of 99.999 percent water and only 0.001 percent pure silver with no nitric acid component -- as in silver nitrate.

Barwick: All of this begs the obvious question of how long do you think the EU will allow that loophole to remain open? Put another way, what makes you confident that colloidal silver will continue to be legally sold as a “water disinfectant”?

Sultan: There’s a long history of precedent. In other words, silver has been sold and used here as a water disinfectant for a long time.

For example, for many years there have been highly concentrated silver nitrate based products on the European market. These are for disinfecting the water kept in the fresh water tank in marine vessels. You can give your readers this web site link to see one great example of this.

Ever since the 1950s large ships have been equipped with silver-based water purification systems. In fact, there are tens of thousands of large ships around the world that utilize this technology. One of the pioneers and largest manufacturers of this technology is the Swedish company Jowa. You can see an excerpt from their product description at this web site link.

Jowa also have a water purification system that sterilizes the water through the use of silver ions, much like the ones your little colloidal silver generators produce. This product, called Jowa AG-S, has made Sweden world-famous in the shipping industry. This sterilization method provides long-term protection and is a suitable method for long-term storage of drinking water. Since its introduction in 1970, this unit has been installed in thousands of ships.

Incidentally, sterilizing water with the help of silver is an old and well-proven method that goes all the way back to antiquity. It is completely harmless to humans and animals and the silver ions do not change the taste or smell of the water.

The bottom line is that Europe has a long tradition of using silver as a water disinfectant. That’s why I’m not too worried about the loophole being closed. I believe we’ll be able to sell colloidal silver as a “water disinfectant” for a long time into the future.

Barwick: That’s heartening to know. But here in the U.S., I’m not so sure we could get away with simply re-labeling our colloidal silver products as “water disinfectants” should the U.S. start harmonizing its food supplement laws with the EU, in accord with the ongoing Codex Alimentarius process.

My deepest suspicion is that the various environmental groups that have been working so hard to have silver regulated as an environmental toxin would take grave issue with that tactic. They’d see the potential for millions of people to start using colloidal silver for water disinfectant purposes, and they’d likely pressure our Environmental Protection Agency to take regulatory action to close that loophole. I hope not. But I suspect that’s what would happen. In fact, I suspect that’s actually why the environmentalists are working so hard to have silver regulated.

Sultan: As you know, in your country NASA has equipped its space shuttles with a silver-based water purification system. This helps purify all water circulated on the space flights -- even urine! It’s all re-used. NASA researched 23 different methods of water purification and finally chose a silver water filter system for recycling and disinfecting water aboard the space shuttles. So maybe that’s some kind of precedent you could capitalize on.

Barwick: Perhaps. But space-based use of silver as a water disinfectant is pretty miniscule, and the argument can’t be made that it poses a threat to earth’s environment. So I’m not sure that precedent is going to stop the EPA from attempting to regulate silver more stringently as an environmental toxin or “pesticide” -- particularly if the environmental groups push them harder to do so.

The environmentalists here seem pretty dead-set on hyper-regulating all silver-based products and restricting their usage. And of course, as one well-known natural health journalist has recently pointed out in an article published on our blog, some of the very environmental groups fighting to regulate silver as a threat to the environment have been known to take huge sums of money from Big Pharma.

Once our food supplement laws are harmonized with EU food supplement laws under the Codex Alimentarius process, and colloidal silver is banned here, too, as it is in Europe, it would be strange to see colloidal silver still available as a “water disinfectant.” But if that’s the only way U.S. manufacturers could sell it, I suppose they’ll have to give it a try and see whether or not the bureaucrats let them get away with it.

Sultan: It’s what works here.

Barwick: In Sweden, don’t you have a bureaucracy that’s similar to our Environmental Protection Agency? As you know, here in the U.S. various environmental groups are constantly complaining about the alleged threat of silver entering the public waterways, and warning that it could kill “ecologically sensitive microorganisms” that the environment depends upon.

They recently worked to stop Samsung Corporation, for example, from selling their Silver Care washing machine, which injected very small amounts of ionic silver into the rinse cycle, as a means of keeping clothing and other fabrics fresher and bacteria free after washing. They claimed they were afraid the silver would find its way back into the environment and harm essential microbes.

Are you saying there are no environmental agencies in Sweden, or in other European countries, that have been making noises about restricting silver usage in order to “protect the environment.”

Sultan: Oh we definitely have that same problem over here and stopping silver sure looks like part of a global hidden agenda – it simply hasn’t surfaced everywhere yet.

We have had our share of people -- even people calling themselves scientists -- using unsubstantiated claims saying silver is toxic and would color people gray, damage internal organs, be detrimental to the environment and create antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.

We on the other hand have pointed at studies in both Iran and India demonstrating the fact that silver ions or silver nano-particles added to antibiotics actually solve the problems associated with resistant strains of bacteria.

We also had a study conducted on our Ionosil product that proves it is extremely effective on MRSA, which of course is a highly antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria. We even got a testimonial from a woman who contracted MRSA, and struggled with dual forms of antibiotics for three months with no improvement. But once she started using our product internally and topically, the MRSA was gone within 24 hours.

Barwick: Yes, I’m aware of colloidal silver’s very profound effectiveness against MRSA. There’s a web site called Colloidal Silver Cures MRSA which discusses the various studies proving this. Yet here in the U.S., the claim from the orthodox medical groups is that colloidal silver will actually cause antibiotic resistance to develop.

Sultan: Same in Sweden. In 2007, one doctor and “scientist” in Stockholm, named Asa Melhus, stated publicly that the increased use of silver would create a lot of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. The media was full of her accusations that silver based products would create a flood of silver-resistant bacteria that would at the same time be antibiotic-resistant.

Danish scientists on the other hand, did a thorough follow-up on all their 400 cataloged antibiotic-resistant strains and found that not a single one of these bacterial strains were resistant to silver. So it turns out that silver would actually be the answer needed to solve the problems they’re having with drug-resistant bacterial strains. You can read more about this in a Danish magazine at this web site: http://ing.dk/artikel/83533 (use Google translate).

This doctor was later shown to have a personal interest in getting rid of silver since she was the owner of a patent on an anti-infective wound dressing based on Xylitol (birch sugar). See http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2005058381.

This woman was so out of it that she later accused our product of giving Rosemary Jacobs argyria back in the 1950’s. She actually says so in a videotaped lecture given to other doctors. Our product, of course, wasn’t even introduced to the market until 2001, a full 51 years after Rosemary contracted argyria from a medication prescribed by her doctor.

Most people, even scientists, have a hard time understanding the fact that there’s a huge difference between toxic silver salts and non-toxic silver in the form of colloidal silver for instance. They just claim it’s all the same thing – which of course it isn’t.

They also claim silver is a “heavy metal” – not taking into account that so is iron, zinc and copper – which of course are minerals we cannot live without. This way of trying to scare people is most certainly due to the underlying monetary self-interest some people have in seeing silver removed from the market so their own patented drug products can be sold successfully.

By the way, most modern chemists want to move away from the term “heavy metal” as it doesn’t say anything about the mineral per say. After all, most minerals are classified as “heavy” because of their atomic weight. One should instead focus on whether or not the mineral is actually toxic. Pure silver is non-toxic. Silver salts are toxic, as are most other mineral salts.

We have shown, for example, that using our product in a responsible manner could never cause argyria as the total intake never exceeds the World Health Organization’s NOAEL (Non Observed Adverse Effect Level), which is set to 10 grams of ingested silver over a lifetime.

Taking six teaspoons of our 10 ppm product each and every day for eighty years still doesn’t exceed NOAEL. What’s more, NOAEL doesn’t even take into account the fact that 90-99 percent of the consumed silver is excreted from the body usually within 24 hours due to the homeostatic work performed by the body’s metallo proteins.

By the way, Samsung’s Silver Care washing machine was actually criticized by environmentalists in Sweden way back in 2006, but they never managed to ban it.

Steve, I have never quite understood the hoopla created by these environment organizations. Silver is a naturally occurring non-toxic mineral created by nature and in my sober view, it is only common sense that it can easily be returned to Mother Nature, in what amounts to doses corresponding to micrograms, without creating a havoc.

As you know, once released back into the environment silver ions bind to just about everything organic and are rendered inert and do not have any reactive capability left.

It was first after reading your much appreciated blog post about how Big Pharma have influenced environmental groups into attacking a normal occurring mineral like silver, that I got the whole picture.

In my view these environmental groups should instead be going after the toxic waste Big Pharma spreads around itself! I guess the environmentalists will have a hard time finding funding from Big Pharma for that, though!

Barwick: Yes, we’ve frequently pointed out that the environmentalists are operating under a double standard. They attack silver by claiming that unrestricted silver usage by consumers has the “potential” to someday cause a buildup of silver in our waterways. So they want silver usage severely restricted, even banned, based on this unproven “potential.”

Yet at the same time numerous investigative reports published in the U.S. media have demonstrated that our waterways are already being heavily polluted with tons of dangerous pharmaceutical drugs, and that dozens of U.S. cities are showing higher and higher levels of these drugs in the public water supply. Yet the environmentalists don’t utter a peep about this very real threat.

In short, they go after the non-existent threat to the environment posed by silver, but ignore the very real threat to the environment and to millions of people being posed by the dumping of pharmaceutical drugs in our waterways by Big Pharma.

Sultan: That’s certainly a dichotomy. And talking about dichotomies, you’ll probably find it interesting to know that even though silver has been banned from being used as a food supplement here in Europe, it is actually still allowed in certain foods.

Barwick: You’re kidding me?

Sultan: Nope. It’s true. In fact, silver in food has its own E-number, which is E 174. It’s approved in quantum satis, which means in practically unlimited amounts, as long as it’s used in those popular little silver cake and pastry decoration balls purchased in supermarkets. You’ve seen them, haven’t you?

Barwick: Yes, as a kid, I’ve eaten many of them. My mom decorated cakes for a living off and on, and she was always putting those little silver balls on cakes and cookies and pastries, and what not. Here in the U.S. those little silver balls are called silver dragees, and they were very popular for decades.

Sultan: Well, here in Europe one of those tiny silver balls contains the equivalent of 30 ml of 10 ppm colloidal silver – that’s 300 micro grams per decoration ball. Two year old kids usually have ten or more of these on a piece of birthday cake. That is the same as drinking 300 ml of a 10 ppm colloidal silver product.

Barwick: Here in the U.S. some money-grubbing environmental lawyer has been running around the country suing the various manufacturers of those little silver dragees. This pathetic excuse for a lawyer claims that because the silver dragees actually have real metallic silver in them, they’re toxic.

He’s even managed to get laws passed to pull the products from the market in some states, like California. What’s more, I’m told he even sued the Martha Stewart organization, and many major food and cake decorating supply companies. And it has scared cake, cookie and pastries vendors in other states from selling the little silver balls.

Some cake and pastry supply companies still get away with selling them by labeling them as being “for decorative purposes only.” But this lawyer has been suing them anyway, claiming that the “decorative purposes” label is just a ruse – a loophole that needs to be closed because the cake companies obviously know the silver balls are being eaten by people, even though they are labeled as decorative items.

In fact, this lawyer even admits openly that he’s never found anyone who has been harmed from consuming the little silver dragees. Nevertheless, he’s won some huge court victories by claiming silver is a toxic metal.

According to news reports, he uses a “protect the children” approach, which of course, gains him great sympathy from juries even though these little silver balls have been consumed by kids and adults alike for decades here in the U.S. and to my knowledge there’s never been a single person harmed by eating them.

Sultan: Here in the EU, they don’t seem to worry about kids eating those little silver cake decorations. In the EU document at this link you can read the following: “E 174 (Silver) is used to decorate cakes, candies, and other sweets, and Annex IV of Directive 94/36 allows unlimited use (quantum satis) of this colourant in foods. The standards for purity regarding E 174 (Silver) are reported in EC Directive 94/45 of the 26 July 1995 Commission, which deals with colourants that can be used in foods. The Directive notes that silver presents as a powder composed of finely ground particles of the metal. The metal can also be transformed into ultra-thin sheets or films.”

Barwick: Well, again, that’s quite amazing. At least in this area of the world, we obviously have a bit more bureaucratic meddling over silver going on than you do. On the other hand, the entire EU just banned silver and many other minerals and nutrient ingredients in nutritional supplements. So I guess it’s a mixed bag all over the world at this point, huh? Silver is being attacked from a variety of angles.

Sultan: Well, it just goes to show that you never know where the bureaucrats are going to strike next. Sometimes it seems there’s just no rhyme or reason to it.

Barwick: Have you ever had any run-ins with the Swedish health authorities over your Ionosil colloidal silver product?

Sultan: We were actually threatened by the Swedish FDA back in 2007.They said that if we didn't delete the testimonials we had on our website, we would face one year in prison.

But instead of deleting them, we moved them to another web site, much to their dismay. You can now read these testimonials – over 40 pages worth on colloidal silver and MSM -- at the web site of a very popular Swedish alternative health magazine which you can view at this link. Of course, the web site is in Swedish, but your readers can use Google to translate it, if they care to check it out.

Barwick: We have trouble with testimonials here, too. Our FDA basically says they’re unreliable and therefore potentially misleading. And you’re not supposed to use them in advertising or labeling. But of course some colloidal silver vendors still do, and every now and then the FDA issues threatening letters telling vendors to clean up their web sites or face stiff regulatory action.

To your knowledge, are the laws in Sweden for selling food supplements much different than U.S. laws?

Sultan: In Sweden, you can’t legally claim that a food supplement has any benefit at all. Eat it and be happy. But if you sell it, keep your mouth shut.You’re not supposed to tell the public of any benefit.

When we had our testimonials on our company web site, we had basically integrated them into our marketing, and of course we could have been punished quite severely for doing that.

In retaliation for not deleting the testimonials altogether, as we’d been ordered to do, Swedish authorities staged a nasty news story that aired on the Swedish national news in November 2007. This was on a Sunday evening, when as many people as possible were watching television. They erroneously claimed our product would cause argyria and turn people Gray. They also claimed it would damage people’s internal organs, create antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria and to top it off, they claimed our product is a threat to the environment!

Of course, their claims were laughable. But we lost about 30% of our sales from the assault. Nobody from the authorities contacted us to ask anything before airing the story. We could have easily proven them wrong, but nobody wanted to hear our side of the story first. They just let loose with both barrels. The media is obviously controlled by the same people who benefited from assaulting us and our product.
 
However, after a lot of written communication with the authorities, we finally got an apology from one of the people at the food side of the Swedish FDA.She admitted they had no knowledge of how much silver was required to give a person argyria, and she apologized for the situation, admitting they should have spoken of silver in general rather than focusing on our product.

But…they wouldn't go public with the apology. No sir. Their senior lawyer told us they had no intent of doing that. Your readers can follow much of the story on our web site. But of course it’s in Swedish so they’ll have to use Google to translate the page. It’s actually quite understandable.

Between that time and now we have fought our way back and regained a lot of our market share by communicating lots of facts and data on our web site.And we’ve more or less doubled our sales.

We also reported these authorities to another Swedish authority called JK (i.e., the Chanselor of Justice). Their job is to monitor the other authorities. We sued the Swedish state and the FDA for the economic loss it caused us, but the number of cases this authority has to handle is really high, so it is not until now in January 2010 that they have promised to go through it and give us a ruling.

Barwick: It will be quite interesting to see what comes of it.