Why is our solution 10ppm?
Ppm stands for parts per million. It is often thought that this refers to the amount of particles that there are in a given in amount, i.e. 10 parts of silver per million parts of water. This is not true.
Ppm refers to the weight of silver (or any other substance) in a given amount of water, as in mg/L (milligram per litre)
So 10 ppm colloidal (or ionic) silver contains 10 mg of silver per litre of water
So 10ppm colloidal silver contains less silver than 20, 25 or 50ppm silver? – This is true
So why do you only need 10 ppm if higher numbers contain more silver?
Because you only need 10ppm if your particle size is small enough, our colloidal silver contains particle sizes as small as 0.0008 microns (that’s 0.8 nanometres). Colloidal silver being sold with a higher ppm may be trying to compensate for a lower particle size by adding more silver – hoping it will make it more effective.
Why have we tried to get as many 0.0008 micron particle size as possible?
The smaller the particle size, the more effective the solution is.
Many colloidal silver solutions have particle sizes 100 – 1000 times bigger (than 0.0008 microns)
A human hair is approximately 100 microns thick
A red blood cell is approximately 7 microns across
Most bacteria are somewhere between 4 and 15 microns wide.
A virus can be as small as .01 micron.
In studies bacteria have been virtually eradicated in just four minutes when treated with ionic silver. But bacteria treated with larger particles of silver showed only a slight reduction in the bacterial count,
Smaller silver particles have been shown to be up to 10,000 times more effective than larger.
The silver does not actively seek out bacteria and virus, it has to happen across it. Regardless of the ppm (weight per litre) the silver has to directly contact the bacteria.
An extremely crude explanation:-
To use a bag of flour as an amount of silver as an example, and a lawn (blades of grass) as bacteria to explain!!
If we pretend a whole bag of flour is an amount of silver – in a swimming pool (litre) of water the bag of flour (10mg silver) may represent 10ppm.
If you place the bag of flour (representing 10ppm silver) on your garden how many blades of grass (bacteria) would it hit?
Now place the whole bag of flour randomly around the lawn using a serving spoon – how many blades of grass (bacteria) are the grains of flour touching now?
Now walk around the lawn sieving the flour as you go (representing the 10mg of silver being broken down into nanoparticles) – my guess is you could hit virtually every blade of grass with a grain of flour (if you were patient enough!!!)
Please excuse the crude nature of this example but I hope it demonstrates the importance of particle size when we are attempting to get silver to touch bacteria, the smaller particles give a much much larger surface area for hitting bacteria.
Yellow Colloidal Silver
It is worth noting that you may have seen Colloidal silver for sale that is yellow in colour. this means that it has larger particles of silver in and may not be as effective as our clear silver.