Disinfection of water with silver ions

Issues concerning water disinfestation and disinfection have always been, still remain and will be relevant as they connected with human’s health preventing infectious diseases. Everyday life activities, and public places like medical institutions, educational and preschool institutions, are supposed to be in need of systematical disinfection as preventive methods from possible diseases.

At the moment, the main methods of water disinfection are to use chlorine, ultraviolet rays, ozone, bromine, active oxygen and ionization of water which are widely used.

An important issue is to clean and purify water.

Ionization of water by means of silver ions has few drawbacks. This kind of water purification experiment excludes usage of chlorine, which is effective, for example, if ionization of silver ions is carried out in swimming pools At the moment, disinfection of water with silver ions is widely used in such countries as Poland, Canada, Belarus, Austria, Germany, Japan and the USA.

Ionization of water with silver ions was developed by the Russian scientist L.A. Kulsky in 1930. Two years later, a similar methodology was elaborated in Germany, twelve years later a similar methodology was published in England.

In the works, LA. Kulsky analyzed sanitary and hygienic recommendations and proposed different methods by means of ionizing water to purify it being one of the preventive measures from various infections and diseases. In contrast to other popular methods to purify water by means of using chlorine having a lot of disadvantage, the use of silver water preserves the beauty of people’s hair and skin. The scientists also stated a dose or amount of silver for various applications in human life (table 1) [1].

Table 1 - Dosage of silver

A high dose of silver in water (20 mg / l), destroy agents of dysentery, salmonellosis and enteropathogenic E. coli thus the method ensures safety and health. So it was proved that silver has a huge spectrum of antimicrobial action. Water, processed with silver, maintains high sanitary and hygienic parameters for a year or more. But, despite a rather thorough study of the antimicrobial properties of silver, its use in the practice of purifying water is supposed to be ineffective and costly due to insufficient information about possible results of toxicity. After all, substances introduced into drinking water should not have any harmful effect on human and animal organisms. The results of the above mentioned study showed that using silver in average concentration of 0.1-0.2 mg / l meets such requirements.

Ionized water can be used for:

• -      water disinfection at home;

• -     room cleaning;

• -     animals care and domestic plants;

• -    water disinfection in educational and medical institutions, etc.

Proceeding from the above pointed statements, it can be concluded that the issues of cleaning water with silver ions have not been thoroughly studied yet, but ionized water has perspectives due to high indicators. Also, it is proved to be harmless to humans’ health, this method of water disinfection has a lot of positive effects as it has no odor and usually does not bring allergic reactions to people. Scientists have proved that small concentration of chlorine in water for a long time gives negative effects and does not meet needs and requirements as some microorganisms get used to water chlorine environment. So this method becomes ineffective. Silver ions affect the microorganisms blocking the flow of oxygen into the cells, which leads to death. It is necessary to study and introduce water disinfection with the help of silver ions.

There are a lot of problems how to do it more economically and effectively so further research can be carried out to prove the research hypothesis.