Best 5 Pictures of Skin Conditions That Turn Your Epidermis All the Colors of the Rainbow (But Actually Just Blue and Orange)

Ok, so this isn't so much a Best 5 post so much as an outlet for my fascination with argyria. I threw in some pictures of carotenosis for some variety. So here goes.


Argyria is a skin disease caused by prolonged exposure to elemental silver and silver compounds. A lot of the people who get it nowadays either used it topically, causing localized blueness, or ingested it for medicinal purposes, causing generalized Smurftasticness. Now, to be fair, ingesting silver is not completely crazy, since the element is known to be an antiseptic. This is because bacteria that come into contact with silver absorb
its atoms, which mess with their metabolism, causing them to die. Even so, with so many antibacterial medications out there, it is a little crazy to risk being blue (PERMANENTLY) by ingesting silver. But I guess the silver lining of the whole matter is that silver has fairly low toxicity, so besides the blueness, there's no real medical harm in the condition.

Stan Jones

 Probably the most famous sufferer of argyria out there is Stan Jones, a man who unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 2002 and 2006. In 1995, Jones had become concerned about the Y2K crisis, and, fearing there would be no more antibiotics after the apocalypse, began drinking huge amounts of colloidal silver. As a result of this four and a half years of silver intake, Jones became the first blue Senatorial candidate. And he defends his choice to this day, saying that in the event that there was a biological attack in the future, he'd take the silver again, because "being alive is more important than turning purple."

Also there's this disease called carotenosis, which turns the skin orange. Most common in vegetarians and young children it's caused by excessive intake of carotenoids, which  are found in carrots and other foods like apples, butter and parsley (quite an assortment, isn't it?) Because of their light skin, it's easy to spot in gingers. But luckily for the gingers of the world and vegetarians, the condition is benign and can be cured by not eating so many carotenoids.

Here's a picture of the condition on a baby:

Not going to lie, though, I can't really see much of the orange in that picture, so to give you an idea of what an orange person might look like, I generated a picture of the imagined offspring of Snooki and John Boehner using morphthing.com. Although, between you and me, I don't think those guys have carotenosis..