Shiny Things - March 14th, 2008

04:24 pm - Argyria

Today's Straight Dope article is about the practice of taking colloidal minerals as a homeopathic remedy. At the end of the article Cecil points out that taking colloidal silver can lead to a condition called argyria, in which the skin turns bluish gray.

I'm glad I read this, because a while back I happened to see a guy on Oprah (it was on in the breakroom: I wasn't watching it willingly) who had blue skin. I was fascinated, but I couldn't hear what they were saying, so I couldn't find out more. By looking up argyria in Wikipedia, I found a link to this article about him.