Silver has a long history of being used as an antimicrobial agent in food and beverage storage applications.
Numerous ancient societies stored wine and water in silver vessels.
Silver was the sterilization agent for water on the Russian MIR space station and on NASA space shuttles, and silver’s broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity and relative low cost have made it a candidate as the active disinfecting agent for water in developing countries.
In 2009, the FDA modified the food additive regulations to permit the direct addition of silver nitrate as a disinfectant to commercially bottled water at concentrations not to exceed 17 μg/kg
Beyond food applications, silver has long been used as an antiseptic.
Hippocrates, the “father of medicine”, advocated the sprinkling of silver powder on ulcers to expedite healing, and silver has been used since World War I (and continues to be used) in wound dressings.
Pencils or sticks of hardened silver nitrate (lunar caustic or lapis infernalis) were considered essential items in a surgeon’s chest as early as the 1600s and silver nitrate solutions were used to treat burn victims of the Hindenberg disaster .
Though the use of silver as an antimicrobial temporarily fell out of favor after the proliferation of chemicals such as Penicillin, interest was revived in the 1960s and silver-based pharmaceuticals continue to be used today as topical and ophthalmic disinfectants.
Silver sulfadiazine is still considered the treatment of choice for burn victims