Smoking Plants that have been treated with Colloidal Silver

[TheFertilizer]

I talked to my friends. Over five decades of near constant silver exposure and they've seen not a trace of any blue-ing other than apparently one time when one of them spilled blue koolaid on herself. Also they've never heard of any cases of it at all in silversmithing circles.
Wikipedia has no mention of the silverware connection. They mainly refer to cases among people who like to guzzle colloidal silver.
Pretty safe to say smoking a treated plant won't make you turn blue. Scratch that off the list I guess
Are we getting anywhere...

Yeah I remember reading it's pretty rare even among those that ingest colloidal silver medicinally. I think I remember reading the bit about blue bloods being more of a wives tale kind of thing and more of an etymology on the term blue-bloods.

Anyway... I would still like to know specifically what kind of biochemistry is going on in the plant. I've heard from several different places that the silver either binds with or blocks ethylene. Ethylene is a hormone that is generally associated with flowering/fruiting in most plants, but the interesting thing is that I hear about it used mostly for fruit ripening.

In any case I'm just curious because I've never really been able to find a solid source of documentation for that. I think it's a prudent consideration to note that the silver may be delivered to our lungs as a silver compound with something else, but anecdotally speaking, I've smoked it before and I'll smoke it again. I'm just curious to know what's actually going on in the plant when silver is introduced.

Are there any chemistry buffs here? What's so special about ethylene that would lead it to readily bind with silver?

 

[Weaselcracker]

I think people with high levels of botanical knowledge are fairly rare on 420 but I suspect those studies have been done somewhere -would love to hear more about that silver bonding angle. We could maybe totally get to the bottom of the original question.

 

[Bonsaiweed]

Funny, (well, not really funny) I decided to see if we could find out what vaporized silver does to human lungs. I typed this directly into google ("what does vaporized silver do to human lungs"). They vaporize colloidal silver for pneumonia and all kinds of bacterial lung infections.

Looks like there are no adverse effects from smoking it. People are actually vaping this stuff.
Don't believe me, google is your friend.

Just have to decide if the silver is still in its original form or if it has become a different chemical solution.

Just passing information I read. I'm not an expert with regard to cannabis (or colloidal silver) in any way.

 

[juz420]

Hi Guys,
I went ahead with the treatment and results are in in 10 days! I put the post in here (Way too many Categories available now I think!) Given the size of the plant (I used a small clone) there is not really enough buds to bother smoking.


Cheers
Juz420

 

[WillGrow510]

Thanks jus420 for showing me the way over here. This is a link to a paper written about silver and human health. It covers all forms of ingestion. Very interesting. It’s lengthy and academic in nature. Here’s an excerpt:

Soluble silver compounds are more readily absorbed than metallic or insoluble silver (Rosenman et al., 1979, 1987; HSE, 1998) and thus have the potential to produce adverse effects on the human body (Weir, 1979). Acute symptoms of overexposure to silver nitrate are decreased blood pressure, diarrhea, stomach irritation and decreased respiration. Chronic symptoms from prolonged intake of low doses of silver salts are fatty degeneration of the liver and kidneys and changes in blood cells (Venugopal and Luckey, 1978). Long-term inhalation or ingestion of soluble silver compounds or colloidal silver may cause argyria and/or argyrosis (Nordberg and Gerhardsson, 1988; Fung and Bowen, 1996; Gulbranson et al., 2000). Soluble silver compounds are also capable of accumulating in small amounts in the brain and in muscles (Fung and Bowen, 1996). Silver in any form is not thought to be toxic to the immune, cardiovascular, nervous, or reproductive systems (ATSDR, 1990) and is not considered to be carcinogenic (Furst and Schlauder, 1978).

Here’s the article.

Ingesting silver academic paper

 

[TheFertilizer]

Thanks jus420 for showing me the way over here. This is a link to a paper written about silver and human health. It covers all forms of ingestion. Very interesting. It’s lengthy and academic in nature. Here’s an excerpt:

Soluble silver compounds are more readily absorbed than metallic or insoluble silver (Rosenman et al., 1979, 1987; HSE, 1998) and thus have the potential to produce adverse effects on the human body (Weir, 1979). Acute symptoms of overexposure to silver nitrate are decreased blood pressure, diarrhea, stomach irritation and decreased respiration. Chronic symptoms from prolonged intake of low doses of silver salts are fatty degeneration of the liver and kidneys and changes in blood cells (Venugopal and Luckey, 1978). Long-term inhalation or ingestion of soluble silver compounds or colloidal silver may cause argyria and/or argyrosis (Nordberg and Gerhardsson, 1988; Fung and Bowen, 1996; Gulbranson et al., 2000). Soluble silver compounds are also capable of accumulating in small amounts in the brain and in muscles (Fung and Bowen, 1996). Silver in any form is not thought to be toxic to the immune, cardiovascular, nervous, or reproductive systems (ATSDR, 1990) and is not considered to be carcinogenic (Furst and Schlauder, 1978).

Here’s the article.

Ingesting silver academic paper

Sweet, great information. I wonder how those occupational health limits correspond to our usage.

 

[juz420]

Yes that is still yet to be determined, would be nice if a botanist could chime in

 

[TheFertilizer]

Yes that is still yet to be determined, would be nice if a botanist could chime in

I think an agriculture specialist would probably have more of the answers. In the ag industry they don't spray an awful lot of stuff on plants that isn't researched to death, so they're the most likely to have those answers, and I think it's likely that they do have these very specific answers because I think they developed this method. I'm just not sure what plants they used it on, and if they ever really used colloidal silver or if silver thiosulfate was always the industry standard. I heard people say that STS is what "the pros" use, but you never really hear more about it than that. Honestly I took a plant science course with a pretty smart instructor who was very interested and knew a lot about taxonomy more than anything else, but he had never even heard of this process. I tried finding some literature on it in the university's research databases, which are connected to scholarly databases and libraries all over, and I couldn't find anything about it. Maybe I just suck at searching, but it just seems like an extremely niche thing with not much documentation.

 

[WillGrow510]

I think the thing to look at how it is inhaled into the lungs from combustion. There really is no filter from the lungs to the blood vs. through the liver from ingestion. Interesting stuff. Similar to pestisides that might be safe at little w levels if eaten on a tomato would be different if it was smoked through the lungs.

 

[Bonsaiweed]

I think the thing to look at how it is inhaled into the lungs from combustion. There really is no filter from the lungs to the blood vs. through the liver from ingestion. Interesting stuff. Similar to pestisides that might be safe at little w levels if eaten on a tomato would be different if it was smoked through the lungs.

My issue is a flame would make it silver oxide. Can't say how that would differ in the body to colloidal silver (is CS already mostly oxidated?).

 

[WillGrow510]

Ya, I’m no expert either, but this article i linked to discussed silver oxide too and has some concerning findings. I like a better safe than sorry approach until I can find research otherwise. Its only weed and one small sacrificial plant to make seeds seems totally worth it. “A 40 for the homies” as they say. Lol.

 

[TheFertilizer]

I don't mean this to be snooty, self-righteous or anything... But if your access to weed is so plentiful that you can just sacrifice your angel's share like spilling some of your 40 out, that's awesome, and I support your endeavor to keep your supply of medicine as clean as possible. BUT a lot of people do not have that luxury, and can not just so easily sacrifice even a small amount of medicine, and I believe that over-exaggerating the dangers associated with this method is only doing a disservice to these people who need to retain as much as possible of what they grow.

I'm not insinuating you've done anything of the sort, but when someone (again not you) comes around and starts fear mongering how deadly CS is, and some patient is sitting there trying to make an educated and informed decision on whether or not they want to risk it, then I personally believe it does more harm to have people sacrificing crucial medicine out of an over-inflated sense of danger, than it would for them to be inhaling minute amounts of silver fumes. It's not to say that the incidental consumption of silver contaminate is a good thing, but I believe it's a very small necessary evil in the grand scheme of things if a person needs their medicine. I mean, to be perfectly blunt, I think there are a lot worse things people are putting into their cannabis to merit the kind of reaction I see to CS.

One way to put it into perspective... .At 240 ppm an 8 oz bottle of CS would have (236ml * .24 = ) 56.64 mg of silver in the entire bottle. That's really not a large amount when you compare the figures stated in the occupational hazard case studies, where some atmospheric concentrations were as high as 1.03–1.36 mg/m3, and these men were standing in that area for hours working. Imagine someone managed to absorb an entire 50 mg quantity of silver into just 10 grams of flower (ignoring the fact that they'd never see a female flower if they put that much CS into that small amount of plant matter), and smoked it all in a couple massive blunts. They probably wouldn't even have come close to inhaling the same amount of silver those men would in their average workweek. Those guys probably go home and pick 50 mg of silver out of their bugers.

Ultimately I think this is one of those things that should be an informed personal decision, but I think there's been a pretty woeful lack of actual information on most of the sites I've read about it, so kudos for digging up that article. I think we may have different takes on the same information, but still it's good to have actual documentation to look at.

I wonder how various extract methods effect it. Is silver soluble in butane? I imagine ice/bubble hash would reduce the overall amount without increase concentration as well.

 

[Bonsaiweed]

Do as you wish. Nothing is known as absolute in this conversation. But be educated about what you are doing. Don't have the "won't happen to me" attitude.

You say over exaggerate.... are you a biologist? A doctor? A PhD in human anatomy and physiology? a chemist? I'm not either. But I can read, and I took chemistry. What you are putting on this plant, may not be the chemical you are inhaling (smoking). Anybody doing such should at least consider the possibility.

If that scares you, then maybe you shouldn't do it. If you don't think so, then toke away I say.

There are other methods to get pollen from a plant. Not necessarily auto-flowering plants, but no one makes you grow those alone.

I'm stating what I will be doing. The information is there for you to make your own decision. That is the whole reason for the discussion.

Be informed. Knowledge never killed anyone, unless they were lacking it.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Do as you wish. Nothing is known as absolute in this conversation. But be educated about what you are doing. Don't have the "won't happen to me" attitude.

You say over exaggerate.... are you a biologist? A doctor? A PhD in human anatomy and physiology? a chemist? I'm not either. But I can read, and I took chemistry. What you are putting on this plant, may not be the chemical you are inhaling (smoking). Anybody doing such should at least consider the possibility.

If that scares you, then maybe you shouldn't do it. If you don't think so, then toke away I say.

There are other methods to get pollen from a plant. Not necessarily auto-flowering plants, but no one makes you grow those alone.

I'm stating what I will be doing. The information is there for you to make your own decision. That is the whole reason for the discussion.

Be informed. Knowledge never killed anyone, unless they were lacking it.

Yes, over exaggerate. Have you seen the types of articles that I'm talking about? I can't link, but some just unanimously declare it as "unsafe" without any more mention. Not necessarily misleading, but not leaving much up to the reader either, only linking to this in a small footnote Colloidal Silver, and we've already discussed the differences in chemistry, method of exposure, and elsewise that makes linking with such evidence not really supportive of such a claim overall. It's basically an apples to oranges fallacy.

Another just uses this strong language

"Take note: NEVER consume or smoke the parts of the plant that you sprayed with the colloidal silver solution (wiki). If you’re not 100% sure about which parts were sprayed, simply discard the entire plant to be safe. The pollen, on the other hand, will be totally safe."

I've personally seen far more misleading posts on Facebook telling people it will give them cancer. But again, where do you think people got that idea.

Maybe I'm coming off as rude or something, but I frankly do not think that the "better safe than sorry" determination can be made by any lay person for any other lay person. Either disclose all the information or don't comment. You ask me if I'm a doctor... None of the people espousing the horrible dangers of CS are.

I mean, there's wider implications here than people catching a buzz. Imagine people with PTSD or anxiety letting their mental health untreated because all they have is CS contaminated bud; imagine they've been led to believe it's basically toxic, while in the meantime they're sitting there with a flashback or anxiety attack that could easily turn into something more serious. Imagine someone with cyclic vomiting syndrome that can't stop puking going into tachychardia-induced cardiac-arrest because of dehydration, because they avoided smoking CS contaminated weed that could have stopped their vomiting and allowed them to keep down vital fluids. I'm not a doctor, but I've faced all of those, and I've smoked CS contaminated weed. I'm alive (thanks to cannabis) and I'm not blue (despite colloidal silver). My "safe" is different, and I strongly believe that a lot of people in my position have probably kept themselves "unsafe" avoiding CS contaminated weed when it actually would have benefited them, and all because of very vague over-exaggerated claims about the dangers of it.

I mean I commend WillGrow510 for finding that great article, but I think it really tells us a lot about what we already knew were the dangers of silver were, and comments more on the occupational exposure levels that create those conditions. Yes I understand chemistry ( and I know how to read too ) and know that the silver may be changed to some other compound, but again I have the anecdotal evidence of having smoked it and not turned into a smurf or something else undesirable, so I think that ought to count for something. In the end though, you have to consider that the people ( including myself ) I'm advocating for may not be in the condition or the capacity to go find white papers on the dangers of silver exposure in order to assure themselves that it will be safe. So in that respect, I think that sites with guides like the ones I've mentioned, making very authoritative claims about the dangers of CS without authoritative literature to back it up, are doing ( and have done ) and extreme disservice to patients who could have otherwise sought relief with better information. I don't think it was intentional of course, but sometimes the "Better safe than sorry" game can have unintended consequences as well.

Long story short, I'm not a doctor, but as a medical patient I am 100% assured that I would have been at a greater risk for a more severe adverse health effect if I had left my conditions untreated, and I think that's something very important to point out and consider for others who are in such debilitated states that they cannot do this type of research and critical thinking for themselves. If it weren't for that I wouldn't raise such a stink about it.

 

[Rifleman]

Ho hum. Just treated part of a plant for a seed run this last grow. I'll get 4 to 6 oz from the plant, and toss the one flower I sprayed, and still harvest a couple thousand seeds. Literally less than 3 grams worth of dry flower will be discarded.

If that's the difference in having something to smoke or doing without, I'd say the "grower" has bigger concerns than CS.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Ho hum. Just treated part of a plant for a seed run this last grow. I'll get 4 to 6 oz from the plant, and toss the one flower I sprayed, and still harvest a couple thousand seeds. Literally less than 3 grams worth of dry flower will be discarded.

If that's the difference in having something to smoke or doing without, I'd say the "grower" has bigger concerns than CS.

Yeah, I'd say so too, and I think it'd be a shame for them to throw it away thinking that smoking it will give them cancer or kill them or something.

 

[Bonsaiweed]

Yes, over exaggerate. Have you seen the types of articles that I'm talking about? I can't link, but some just unanimously declare it as "unsafe" without any more mention. Not necessarily misleading, but not leaving much up to the reader either, only linking to this in a small footnote Colloidal Silver, and we've already discussed the differences in chemistry, method of exposure, and elsewise that makes linking with such evidence not really supportive of such a claim overall. It's basically an apples to oranges fallacy.

Another just uses this strong language

"Take note: NEVER consume or smoke the parts of the plant that you sprayed with the colloidal silver solution (wiki). If you’re not 100% sure about which parts were sprayed, simply discard the entire plant to be safe. The pollen, on the other hand, will be totally safe."

I've personally seen far more misleading posts on Facebook telling people it will give them cancer. But again, where do you think people got that idea.

Maybe I'm coming off as rude or something, but I frankly do not think that the "better safe than sorry" determination can be made by any lay person for any other lay person. Either disclose all the information or don't comment. You ask me if I'm a doctor... None of the people espousing the horrible dangers of CS are.

I mean, there's wider implications here than people catching a buzz. Imagine people with PTSD or anxiety letting their mental health untreated because all they have is CS contaminated bud; imagine they've been led to believe it's basically toxic, while in the meantime they're sitting there with a flashback or anxiety attack that could easily turn into something more serious. Imagine someone with cyclic vomiting syndrome that can't stop puking going into tachychardia-induced cardiac-arrest because of dehydration, because they avoided smoking CS contaminated weed that could have stopped their vomiting and allowed them to keep down vital fluids. I'm not a doctor, but I've faced all of those, and I've smoked CS contaminated weed. I'm alive (thanks to cannabis) and I'm not blue (despite colloidal silver). My "safe" is different, and I strongly believe that a lot of people in my position have probably kept themselves "unsafe" avoiding CS contaminated weed when it actually would have benefited them, and all because of very vague over-exaggerated claims about the dangers of it.

I mean I commend WillGrow510 for finding that great article, but I think it really tells us a lot about what we already knew were the dangers of silver were, and comments more on the occupational exposure levels that create those conditions. Yes I understand chemistry ( and I know how to read too ) and know that the silver may be changed to some other compound, but again I have the anecdotal evidence of having smoked it and not turned into a smurf or something else undesirable, so I think that ought to count for something. In the end though, you have to consider that the people ( including myself ) I'm advocating for may not be in the condition or the capacity to go find white papers on the dangers of silver exposure in order to assure themselves that it will be safe. So in that respect, I think that sites with guides like the ones I've mentioned, making very authoritative claims about the dangers of CS without authoritative literature to back it up, are doing ( and have done ) and extreme disservice to patients who could have otherwise sought relief with better information. I don't think it was intentional of course, but sometimes the "Better safe than sorry" game can have unintended consequences as well.

Long story short, I'm not a doctor, but as a medical patient I am 100% assured that I would have been at a greater risk for a more severe adverse health effect if I had left my conditions untreated, and I think that's something very important to point out and consider for others who are in such debilitated states that they cannot do this type of research and critical thinking for themselves. If it weren't for that I wouldn't raise such a stink about it.

I understand your frustration. I also agree no one should make any absolute determination about a plant which has been sprayed with CS. No one really knows.

I have PTSD, and I haven't always been medicated. Still, if I have to make a choice for myself. You know what I will do. Will it make my life harder? Yes, it will, but I make decisions for myself based on the information available.

You talk about smoking it, but you have no idea the long-term effects. You are still alive today, that doesn't equate to safe. When you die, then someone who knows will be able to state one way or another if it affected your health. You want to dismiss it, but there are people every day making decisions who have no idea the long-term ramifications.

I'm not going to discuss any statements other than the ones here. I have no idea what people everywhere are doing and saying. Our society is full of idiots. Corks on forks and padded rails. It's rampant. I don't eat soap either, just because someone else has done it. Also, most statements from people are opinions. I take them as such. Even a research scientist is relaying an opinion. Facts about health are rarely fact but are recommendations based on multiple observations as a statistical possibility.

If you are in a situation where medication is absolutely needed, then you should be planning ahead to provide that in the safest way possible. Like I stated before, there should never be a point in time, that anyone should NEED to smoke any cannabis that has been sprayed with CS.

You keep making this specific situation that should never happen....ever. If you are growing, you planned for everything else, why didn't you plan to have cannabis that wasn't sprayed with CS? No one else should ever have it in their possession.

A person who needs to smoke cannabis prayed with CS is either, immature, uninformed, or just plain irresponsible.

My rant is over. You can do what you want, but please don't tell people it won't hurt you. Because you do not know.

 

[Bonsaiweed]

I want to apologize to everyone on the forum that has read this thread. I let my anger get the best of me at times and it can show.

I'm quite tired of people stating things that they have no evidence to support their viewpoint. I'm sorry, surviving the situation isn't evidence. But a lung biopsy is.

I'm also exhausted by reading about people that have something happen to them because they didn't even consider any possibility of their actions.

I seem to be surrounded by death, destruction, and ignorance. I've seen enough people die by their own hand, from other peoples hands, from ignorance, and even from my hands. I'm even hurt by the possibility @TheFertilizer could be creating damage to his body that he isn't aware of, even though it is his own free will of choice.

This is part of my PTSD experience, and your experience may vary.

This may not sound like a heartfelt apology, but it's the best I can do at this point.

Thank you for listening.

 

[TheFertilizer]

I want to apologize to everyone on the forum that has read this thread. I let my anger get the best of me at times and it can show.

I'm quite tired of people stating things that they have no evidence to support their viewpoint. I'm sorry, surviving the situation isn't evidence. But a lung biopsy is.

I'm also exhausted by reading about people that have something happen to them because they didn't even consider any possibility of their actions.

I seem to be surrounded by death, destruction, and ignorance. I've seen enough people die by their own hand, from other peoples hands, from ignorance, and even from my hands. I'm even hurt by the possibility @TheFertilizer could be creating damage to his body that he isn't aware of, even though it is his own free will of choice.

This is part of my PTSD experience, and your experience may vary.

This may not sound like a heartfelt apology, but it's the best I can do at this point.

Thank you for listening.

No problem, Chicken Little

 

[WillGrow510]

I'm quite tired of people stating things that they have no evidence to support their viewpoint.

Yes, yes. I learned early on that if you put youself in a situation to take a position, you better have some sources to cite or some references to offer. Otherwise you are just perpetuating “informed ignorance”, especially in this day and age of headline readers. People feel like experts in a topic they read a headline on. Fascinating. I am fed up too, brother. (Or sister...).

The OP asked (and I summarize), if CS treated pot safe to consume by smoking or eating. This could be a good forum to gather such anecdotal evidence, or perhape the OP is looking for scientific data to back any claim up. If we want to help each other, let’s help by stating if we have sources that back up our thoughts, or if it’s purely anecdotal, state that. I personally would leave the emotions out of replies when it’s clear others have taken time to provide something the OP asked for. The stakes are simply too high.

And that’s my 10 cents.