Investigation of residual Ag amount into human body using Ag/AgCl electrodes during IBC

The silver/silver chloride (Ag/AgCl) electrode is a widely-used electrode type for signal stimulation and detection in many groups during their Intra-body communication (IBC) investigations. Silver ions may reside in the human body during the IBC process. This may cause argyria and argyrosis due to the accumulation over time. In this article, IBC pseudo-experiments of signal stimulation and detection by using Ag/AgCl electrodes are designed and conducted to measure the amount of silver ion residue. For the sake of safety and simplicity, physiological saline is used instead of the human in the experiments. The stimulation and detection experiments in galvanic coupling method as well as the capacitive coupling method show that there exists silver ion residual. Although the amount of the silver ion residue is remained within the safety standard in each experiment, it may be not safe by using the Ag/AgCl electrodes frequently.