Use of Nanosilver

Silver is used in ice-making machinery, packaging and for other products in contact with food and water. Therapeutic products for wound care, where the silver containing biocide layer is in direct contact with the lesion, are also now allowed to be sold. Biocidal silver is used in wood preservation. Silver chemicals are effective in improving the resistance of wood to termites. An exciting new use of silver could be as an agricultural crop protection pesticide. Another potentially important use of silver could be as a protection component in clothing and respiratory equipment for military, emergency, and first response personnel who would be in the front lines facing bacterial and chemical warfare agents. Silver, with its broad scale effectiveness against infectious organisms and ability to react rapidly with many chemicals, is already being tested for such purposes. Efforts are underway to improve the speed of silver’s capability to detoxify chemical and biological weapons. Silver also looks like it will play a major role in the promising field of nanomaterials technologies and applications. Electronic properties of nanosilver constructions appear especially intriguing. Nanosilver particles also seem to offer much higher speed and efficiency in pathogen control.