Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My son is in the middle of a science fair project with his best friend. The two decided to do their science project on: "Is silver as effective in killing germs as traditional methods?" Now I've ordered quite a few different brands of silver products over the past 4 years since learning about their purported strong anti microbial properties. This particular brand is the bottle I just happen to have open at the time of this science project. Now believe me when I say that I was nervous to do this project because my family has come to rely on silver products for our health. We use it for topical, internal and optical use -meaning we spray it on the surface of our skin, take it internally and spray it in our eyes. For those reasons, I was nervous to find out, through this test, that silver wasn't effective. Not only that, I didn't want to find out that this particular silver product was fake and didn't contain any silver at all but the former was a larger concern. So I first baselined the silver to make sure it contained some form of silver by adding chloride (simple table salt) into an ounce of this brand of silver. If silver ions are present, the solution will turn cloudy because of the chemical reaction between silver and chloride. It turned cloudy as the table salt dissolved. I also wanted to make sure that there were no added proteins in this solution by simply shaking the bottled solution vigorously. Protein is used to suspend the silver particles in cheaper silver products. WARNING: Added proteins can be dangerous because they can actually contain bacteria. Normally bacteria wouldn't survive in silver. However, with added proteins, silver can be surrounded by a bubble within this protein, thusly never being able to come in contact with bacteria. There has been laboratory tests where a tested solution(s) was excluded from testing due to bacteria being found within the silver solution under a microscope. At any rate, if a layer of foam persists on the surface, then proteins would be present: AFTER vigorously shaking, no foam whatsoever in this solution - on to the experiment. So my son's experiment consisted of this: rubbing the bottom of one of his shoes with one hand, swab that hand with a sterile swab and then rub the swab into a Petri dish containing an agar solution. Afterwards he would wash his hands, rub the bottom of his shoe again and then clean his hands with the one of the following methods: regular soap and water; anti bacterial soap and water; alcohol based hand sanitizer; this brand of silver product. After each hand washing method, he and his science fair partner would swab the same hand with a sterile swab and then rub that into the Petri dish. For the test using the silver, he and his partner used it exactly like hand sanitizer - just sprayed it onto the dirty hand liberally and just rubbed the hands together. After the hands air dried, we immediately swabbed the hand being tested. The results speak for themselves. The first 2 pictures, from left to right are the unwashed hands; my son's hand and then his partner's hand. The next 2 pictures are the results of the silver applied to the dirty hand and rubbing it into both hands together. His science fair partner had no visible spore growths. My son's had just 2 extremely small and almost imperceptible white pin head dots of spore growth. It was difficult to see through the condensation that had developed in each petri dish. All the other tests had no perceivable spore growths except: my son's anti bacterial hand soap test. His anti bacterial had 4 small spore growths. The Petri dishes were incubated in a bucket with a halogen bulb lamp turned on for heat for a period of 47 hours at an average temperature of 89.5°. The low was 84° and the high was 95°. So from this simple experiment, I can positively say that this particular silver solution KILLS bacteria and whatever else would be on the bottom of a shoe. With the proliferation of superbugs becoming resistant to traditional anti-biotics, this may be something you'd want to keep within your arsenal of health maintenance. My .02 cents.