Higher MMS maintenance doses of 6 drops daily are regularly used by some people, so your use dose of 1 or 2 drops daily is relatively low.
Drinking water may not be a good point of comparison, as the following explains:
Chlorine dioxide as a drinking water treatment is used at concentrations of up to 0.8 ppm (= 0.8 mg of chlorine dioxide per liter of water). Ref:
1
Now each drop of Miracle Mineral Supplement (MMS) contains roughly 10 mg of sodium chlorite, which generates around 8 mg of chlorine dioxide when the citric acid activator is added to it (ref:
1), so if you are using two drops of MMS (= 16 mg of chlorine dioxide) in a 200 mg glass of water, that would equate to a concentration of 80 mg chlorine dioxide per liter of water = 80 ppm.
Note that 1 mg per liter = 1 ppm.
So your 200 mg glass of water contains around 100 times the concentration of chlorine dioxide that you would get from drinking water disinfected with 0.8 ppm chlorine dioxide.
One possible point of comparison is chlorine dioxide mouthwashes like
ProFresh which contains 40 ppm of chlorine dioxide. Although note that a mouthwash would normally only be swished around your mouth for a minute or two, before being spat out. So here you have a 40 ppm chlorine dioxide solution in contact with your oral mucous membranes for a minute or so.
By comparison, if you drink a glass of 80 ppm chlorine dioxide solution, that liquid will be in contact with your stomach mucous membranes for around an hour (since it takes 75 to 120 minutes for a large glass of water in the stomach to be absorbed into the bloodstream
1). So that's a longer time in contact with the mucous membranes, which might conceivably be damaging. Once in the bloodstream, the chlorine dioxide solution will become more diluted in the many liters of fluids of the body (the body contains a total of around 50 liters of water, so your 80 ppm concentration will be diluted down to around 0.3 ppm once in the bloodstream and body fluids).
(Note that although ProFresh genuinely contain chlorine dioxide, most mouthwashes advertised as containing chlorine dioxide do not contain it; they instead contain "stabilized chlorine dioxide", which is in fact sodium chlorite, a similar but slightly weaker oxidant than chlorine dioxide).
A
chlorine dioxide safety study on humans administered 500 ml of water daily containing a concentration of 5 mg chlorine dioxide per liter (= 5 ppm) for twelve consecutive weeks (so that's the equivalent of about a quarter of a drop of MMS daily). No detrimental physiological effects were observed at this dose level and for this duration of 12 weeks. But again, if there were some carcinogenic effects, these might only appear after longer term administration, and might only appear decades later.
How likely is it that chlorine dioxide is carcinogenic? Well if you look on the CDC website
here, they basically say there is not enough data to classify whether it can cause cancer or not.
But in a
study giving household bleach (sodium hypochlorite) to rats in their drinking water at concentrations of up to 0.2% (= 2000 ppm) for 2 years, no carcinogenic effects were observed. (2000 ppm in rats is the equivalent of around 320 ppm in humans). Note that household bleach is a stronger oxidant than chlorine dioxide.
And in another
study, sodium hypochlorite (household bleach) was administered for two years to rats and mice at 1000 ppm in their drinking water. (1000 ppm in rats is the equivalent of around 160 ppm in humans). No carcinogenic effects were observed.
The same study administered for 1.6 years sodium chlorite to rats at 600 ppm in their drinking water. (600 ppm in rats is the equivalent of around 100 ppm in humans). Again no carcinogenic effects were observed. Sodium chlorite is the MMS ingredient (one of the two bottles in an MMS kit contains 28% sodium chlorite, the other the citric acid activator, which reacts with the sodium chlorite to form chlorine dioxide).
It is worth noting that those with glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency may be more sensitive to chlorine dioxide or chlorite, because of a reduced ability to maintain glutathione levels. In such individuals, chlorine dioxide or chlorite may lead to destruction of red blood cells, and hemolytic anemia. Ref:
1
Another point of comparison is the pharmaceutical drug
tetrachlorodecaoxide, an immunomodulatory, macrophage-activating drug which contains
chlorite (chlorite is the ionized form of chlorine dioxide). Chlorite is a very similar but slightly weaker oxidant than chlorine dioxide.
Tetrachlorodecaoxide is medically administered via the intravenous drug
WF10, which is just a 10% solution of tetrachlorodecaoxide. 1 ml of WF10 solution contains 4.25 mg of chlorite. Ref:
1
WF10 can perhaps be compared to MMS, because when chlorine dioxide enters the body, it is quickly converted to chlorite (
this CDC webpage says: "
Both chlorine dioxide and chlorite act quickly when they enter the body. Chlorine dioxide quickly changes to chlorite ions, which are broken down further into chloride ions"). So although activated MMS is chlorine dioxide dissolved in water, it quickly turns into the chlorite in the body.
In fact, given that MMS comes in two bottles, one containing 28% sodium chlorite and the other containing the activator (usually 10% citric acid) that turns the sodium chlorite into chlorine dioxide, it might be safer to forget the activator, and just take the sodium chlorite on its own, because chlorite is a slightly weaker oxidant, and so possibly safer. And chlorine dioxide appears to covert into chlorite in the body anyway. So why no just start with chlorite?
In a
clinical trial for chronic allergic rhinitis, 0.5 ml of WF10 per kg body weight was intravenously administered to the patients for 5 days in a row. For an 80 kg person, this works out to an intravenous dose of 170 mg of chlorite coming from the WF10. 170 mg of chlorite would be roughly equivalent to 21 drops of MMS.
So presumably a daily 170 mg dose of chlorite (equivalent to 21 drops of MMS) slowly administered by IV is considered safe, at least for short term administration of 5 days.
However, I am not aware of WF10 being used on a longer term basis; it only seems to be used in short treatment courses.
So that makes it difficult to compare MMS to WF10 on safety grounds, since MMS is often taken on a long term basis for months or years. For example, if there were some carcinogenic effects from MMS and WF10, those effects would normally be proportional to the length of usage and exposure, as with all carcinogens (eg, smoking cigarettes for one month is a much lower cancer risk than smoking for decades).
WF10 is also experimentally used to treat radiation proctitis and cystitis,
1 diabetic foot ulcers,
1 and WF10 is being investigated for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.
1 These treatments are also only short courses of WF10, not long term use.
The only country where WF10 is approved is Thailand, where under the brand name Immunokine, WF10 is used for the treatment of post-radiation-therapy syndromes and adjunctive therapy of diabetic foot ulcers.
1
The mechanism of action of WF10 is detailed in
this study:
So WF10 has various immunomodulatory properties, and thus any benefits that ME/CFS or Lyme patients experience from MMS might be down to these effects of chlorite from WF10 on the immune system, rather than any anti-microbial effects.
I am assuming that the chlorite solution in the MMS kit might have the same immunomodulatory properties as WF10, although in fact WF10 is slightly different to chlorite. If you look at the diagram
here of the tetrachlorodecaoxide molecule found in WF10, you see that the tetrachlorodecaoxide comprises four chlorite molecules (ClO2-); but I believe that tetrachlorodecaoxide decomposes into chlorite once in the body.
A
patent details a stabilized chlorite solution for the purpose of
inhibiting the presentation of antigens by antigen presenting cells. The patent document explains how chlorite can
treat auto-immune diseases.
Here are the details of how this anti-autoimmunity treatment is administered:
So the patent indicates that chlorite is best administered for 5 days, then followed by a rest for 16 days.
The recommended dosing in the patent is a daily intravenous dose of:
A solution of 60 mMol of chlorite per liter = 4 grams chlorite per liter
So for an 80 kg human, that is an intravenous dose of 0.5 x 80 = 40 ml of this solution, which is a dose of 160 mg of chlorite. That is the equivalent of 20 drops of MMS.
