Deirdre (Earth Clinic) on 06/08/2022

Yesterday I emailed Kephra, the founder of the colloidal silver/colloidal gold forum and undoubtedly one of the world's leading experts on CS and CG to get his feedback about the extensive scientific claims made on their website, which I read here: https://coatedsilver.com/about-us/.

Kephra replied: "I am pretty sure it is a scam. Even the description of the operation is incorrect. Silver ions are not exactly the antibacterials. To be effective, the silver ions must be created when the silver nanoparticle gets within atomic distances to the bacteria. This happens with silver nanoparticles because the nanoparticle and the bacteria have opposite electric charges. Opposites attract. Ions are positive charge the same as bacteria, and therefore would repel and not contact the bacteria. When a silver nanoparticle is attracted to a bacteria, the difference in electrical charge causes a nano lightning bolt between them and burns a hole in the bacterial membrane causing the bacteria to essentially bleed to death. The voltage difference is on the order of 1 million volts per meter. Once the nanoparticle burns the hole. it also creates a silver ion which enters the bacteria through the hole it just burned.

I really doubt anyone's ability to make a stable solution with that much silver. 20,000 ppm is 20 grams of silver per liter."

A member of the forum had this reply to Kephra:

"I've heard this explanation from Kephra before, but the part I don't understand is that he says silver ions and bacteria are positively charged. When I look at the literature regarding the charge of bacteria, it looks like most bacteria are negatively charged:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/bacterial-cell#:~:text=Most%20bacterial%20cells%20possess%20an,charge%20of%20bacterial%20cell%20walls.

"Most bacterial cells possess an overall negative charge at neutral pH due to the presence of peptidoglycan, which is rich in carboxyl and amino groups. Teichoic acids containing phosphate-rich components also contribute to the negative charge of bacterial cell walls."

Kephra replied: "I know this is confusing because of the way the charge is measured.

A silver nanoparticle itself is negative because of the free electrons on its surface. But these electrons attract positive ions in what is called the slip layer. The slip layer is what is actually measured as zeta potential. So from the standpoint of zeta potential, the nanoparticle is positive because it's that layer of positive ions surrounding the particle that is actually measured.

The same holds true for the cell surface and surface of bacteria. So if a particle or cell surface is actually negative, it will test as positive because of the slip layer. For any of this to make sense, everything should be measured the same way but they are not."

Thought I would share this feedback with the community.