The most famous “blue man” — known as “Papa Smurf” — has died.
Paul Karason was born a fair-skinned, freckled boy with reddish blond hair. But later, he developed skin with a bluish tinge against his shock of white hair, the result of a rare medical syndrome known as argyria or silver poisoning from dietary supplements.
Karason died at the age of 62 this week after being treated for pneumonia at a Washington hospital after having suffered a heart attack. He’d also previously had a severe stroke, his estranged wife Jo Anna Karason told NBC’s Today.
ABCNews.com interviewed Karason in 2008. At the time he lived in Oregon. He said the blue tinge had started more than a decade before that when he saw an ad in a new-age magazine promising health and rejuvenation through colloidal silver. He drank about 10 ounces a day of the home-brew that he dissolved in water.
Source: ABC News
