Increasing amounts of silver are being found in wastewater. This is because of silver nanoparticle technology.
Nanotechnology involves the rearrangement of the fundamental building blocks of nature at the tiniest, or nanometer (nano), level.
A nanometer is spectacularly tiny. Consider for instance that human hair is 25,000 nanometers wide.
Using nanotechnology, coal atoms can be rearranged to make diamonds, while potatoes can be made from dirt, water and air atoms. All of this has to be done using atomic precision.
These nanoparticles are popping up in rather strange areas. One of these is the use of silver nanoparticles. These are used principally for antibacterial and antifungal purposes.
Before antibiotics, silver was sometimes used as a wonder mineral in medicine. Compounds made from silver fought bacterial, fungal and viral infections.
Silver has recently returned to reclaim its germ fighting role. Silver nanoparticles are being used to prevent foot and body odor. People can buy sox and inner soles, which stop viruses, bacteria, athlete’s foot, corns and all those other things which cause smelly feet.
These nano particles have captured the imagination of manufacturers. Some have decided it can be used in or on any part of the human body where germs lurk. For these manufacturers every human orifice is an opening to make money.
Thus there are anti body odour t-shirts, toothpaste advertised to prevent bad breath, tooth decay and yellow teeth and an insertable foam cream, which is promoted as being able to prevent pregnancy and embarrassing infections.
The list of products which use silver nanoparticles is long, and growing. There are germ fighting underpants, miracle food containers, filth crushing washing machines, dirt resistant toys, kitchen bench germ busters and so on. (See: http://www.nanotechproject.org/)
Traces of silver from all of these are being washed down sinks, toilets and drains and accumulating in higher concentration in waste treatment plants.
The problem with this is waste treatments rely on friendly bacteria, which break down sewerage. And that’s right… silver kills bacteria.
http://www.nnin.org/doc/NNIN1012.pdf