The determination of silver in whole blood and its application to biological monitoring of occupationally exposed groups

Silver from Polyurethane Dressing Is Delivered by Gradient to Exudate, Tissue, and Serum of Patients Undergoing Negative-Pressure Wound Treatment

“…35,36 Although silver levels increased beyond established limits in the patients treated with this therapy, levels as high as 23 Kg/L have been reported in the blood of workers with occupational exposure without causing argyria. 37 Moreover, in the majority of reported cases of high silver levels in blood due to the ingestion of colloidal silver or the use of silver-containing medical devices, metal concentrations returned gradually to normal levels once ingestion or device use was stopped, with no evidence of toxicity. 13,14,20,34 In this study, the authors found that higher silver concentrations in wound exudate not only reflect the affinity of silver for serum and wound fluids, but also indicate that most soluble silver is not distributed systemically in the treated individual.…”

Hydrodynamic chromatography coupled to single-particle ICP-MS for the simultaneous characterization of AgNPs and determination of dissolved Ag in plasma and blood of burn patients

“…Compatibly with our previous estimations that the dose of Ag released by the dressing into the patient's tissues in vivo would be elevated [32], a significant level of total circulating Ag was observed in all patients after 3 days of application of the dressing ( Table 2). The values ranged between~30 and 80 ng mL −1 and were more than 2 orders of magnitude higher than the baseline level in an unexposed population [44] and slightly lower than those observed in the serum of paediatric burn patients treated with the same dressing (average 114 ng mL −1 ) [45]. Differently from the latter cited work, we did not observe any apparent correlation between blood Ag and the percentage of burnt body area, and μXANES spectra of the Acticoat Flex3™ intact dressing and 10 nm AgNPs and ionic Ag incubated in a solution containing HSA or in whole human plasma.…”

Biomonitoring Equivalents for interpretation of silver biomonitoring data in a risk assessment context

“…The derived values from the older USEPA evaluation based on effects data from human populations exposed to ionic silver are in the middle of the range of values In three occupational studies, Di Vincenzo et al (1985) and Perrelli, Piolatto (1992) and Armitage et al (1996) reported that unexposed individuals (controls) had whole blood silver concentrations of less than 5 µg/L, approximately 10 µg/L and less than 0.1 to 0.2 µg/L, respectively. The analytical methodology used in these studies may have been insufficiently sensitive to accurately quantify blood levels of silver in individuals without elevated occupational exposure.…”