Last week you talked about the association of aluminium to Alzheimers. Most of our deodorants have aluminium in them. Is this Dangerous to our health?
Thanks
Bruce
Good question. But first, let’s get the terminology right. The real question is, is aluminium intake a cause of dementia? Alzheimer’s is a disease that is known to cause dementia. In other words, Alzheimer’s is known to cause dementia – does aluminium also cause dementia?
It’s a fairly complex question, but the bottom line is, in most circumstances, no. The only occasion where it is known to cause dementia is where patients on dialysis machines that use unpurified water get it into the bloodstream in huge doses. Beyond that, there is no evidence that usage at normal levels causes dementia.
But is not too hard to work out why people think it does.
The world is full of people with agendas. If you have a product you’re trying to sell, the best way to knock your competitor out of the market is to start a scare campaign about their product. And it’s easy to do – you can just cite unknown experts, invent impressive sounding scientific organisations, cite unpublished studies, and Bob’s your uncle – instant credibility in the eyes of most people.
In this case, a bloke by the name of Howard Force wrote a series of pamphlets with titles such as “Poisons Formed by Aluminum Cooking Utensils and Are You Heading for the Last Round-Up?”
It turns out, coincidentally, that he sold steel saucepans.
And of course with the age of the Internet, it is very easy to disseminate information. It’s very easy to construct impressive looking websites that can make people believe anything you want them to. So based on the available evidence aluminium it’s perfectly safe. And it’s a good thing too – aluminium is all around us. It’s in antiperspirants as Bruce has pointed out (in the form of alumina, an extremely effective adsorbent) as well as in some antacids (as aluminium hydroxide).
Incidentally, aluminium used to be more precious than gold. Not because it is rarer – it certainly isn’t – but because it was so difficult to isolate as the metal. To extract it by Electrowinning was a very slow process, as the potential and which you deposit the Aluminium is about the same as the potential at which you electrolyse water. For this reason, the ultimate expression of luxury at the time was cutlery made out of aluminium, as Napoleon III used to impress his dinner guests.
When molten salt technology was developed, however, the interference caused by the water was eliminated, the price of aluminium plummeted, and it entered our world as the extremely useful lightweight metal that we all use today.