What causes argyria?

Argyria is a condition where deposits of silver build up in your body at toxic levels. It's caused by excessive exposure to chemical compounds of the element silver, or to silver dust. The most dramatic symptom is that the skin turns blue or blue-gray.This causes your skin and nails to turn bluish-gray. This condition is rare but affects people who work in manufacturing or people who take colloidal silver supplements. Symptoms can be irreversible and difficult to treat.

Argyria isn’t common because the use of silver in manufacturing and medicine significantly declined in the 20th century. People who work with silver or use colloidal silver as a dietary supplement are most at risk of developing this condition.

There are three types of argyria:Generalized: symptoms of argyria affect your entire body or large areas of your skin, Localized: symptoms only affect a small part of your body or one area of your skin, Argyrosis: symptoms of argyria affect your eye or eyes only.

Since at least the mid-19th century, doctors have known that silver or silver compounds can cause some areas of the skin and other body tissues to turn grey or blue-gray. Historically, colloidal silver, a liquid suspension of microscopic silver particles, was also used as an internal medication to treat a variety of diseases. In the 1940s, they were replaced with the use of pharmaceutical antibiotics, such as penicillin.