Aluminum has found its way into our drinking water, infant formula, antacid medications, vaccines, pediatric and neonatal parenteral nutritional solutions, cookware, processed foods including baked goods and frozen foods, packaged foods, deodorant, anti-perspirants, and many other beauty products. The problem is: there is no biological necessity for aluminum. And more troublesome, aluminum is associated with many pathological conditions, including silencing gene expression.

So once it’s inside our body–where does it go? What does it do?

Aluminum is a relatively new metal for us (we didn’t really start using it until the 1880s), and as a result, our discoveries about its toxicity are considered emerging science. What’s amazing is that even though aluminum adjuvants (added to vaccines to make them “work” better) have been used since the 1930s, today almost 90 years later, scientists still don’t know how aluminum adjuvants work. And they readily admit that. We also don’t know whether or not injecting aluminum is safe–aluminum’s use as an adjuvant was grandfathered in in the 1970s, (GRAS – generally recognized as safe) and never had to undergo rigorous double-blind, placebo controlled safety studies.

We are no where near understanding the full impacts of aluminum on human biology.

But there are some things we do know: Aluminum is a known neurotoxin. Aluminum is cytotoxic and genotoxic, meaning it’s poisonous to your cells and tissue. It’s suspected to be both mutagenic and carcinogenic. Al has been shown in animals and humans to have the potential to be a toxicant to the central nervous, skeletal and hematopoietic systems. Aluminum works synergistically with other chemicals introduced into the body, namely fluoride, to create an even more toxic compound: aluminum fluoride complexes.

In the last few decades we have discovered that aluminum may have a significant role in breast cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and autism spectrum disorders, as well as Gulf War Syndrome and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and macrophagic myofasciitis, which is an emerging condition characterized by specific muscle lesions assessing abnormal long-term persistence of aluminum hydroxide within macrophages at the site of previous immunization.

Bioavailability of Aluminum

Don’t be fooled: there’s a HUGE distinction between eating aluminum and injecting aluminum.

Ingested: Oral aluminum bioavailability from water is around 0.3%.

This would apply to any ingested substance, whether it’s water, infant formula or breastmilk. This means only 0.3% of the aluminum in the liquid or food enters the body.

Injected: Injected aluminum is 100% absorbed and bioavailable.

The injection into the body means that 100% of the aluminum content of vaccines is literally inserted into the body, and must be dealt with by the body. Infants have lower kidney function than adults, so their elimination is much slower. There is more likelihood of aluminum being stored indefinitely by the body, and ending up distant organs like lymph nodes, spleen, liver and the brain.

Many vaccines are injected into a muscle (intramuscular injection) and one of the modes of action of aluminum adjuvants is called the ‘depot effect’. This may be recognizable as a granuloma, or hard bump, at the injection site that may take months to go away. Even without the bump, the depot effect means the aluminum is thought to linger in the body as it’s stimulating the immune system.

These hypotheses are based on evidence from in vitro studies, with few in vivo validation studies. This is because the study of vaccine adjuvants remains largely empirical, despite our updated knowledge and understanding of immunology.

This experiment led them to generate a hypothesis that the slow elimination of alum-precipitated Ags over a long period of time from single injection site may enhance both primary and secondary stimulation resulting in the associated enhanced Ab titers. 

A rapidly excreted adjuvant would not be doing its “job” in a vaccine if it was eliminated from the body rapidly.

The study “Effect of Routine Vaccination on Aluminum and Essential Element Levels in Preterm Infants” assessed the levels of aluminum in preterm infants before and after the 2-month shots. The experiment found that there was no rise in urine or blood aluminum, meaning, it didn’t leave the body:

“An infant at the 2-month checkup receives multiple aluminum-containing vaccines that in combination may have as high as 1225 µg of intramuscular aluminum; this is a much higher intramuscular aluminum dose than the safely recommended intravenous aluminum dose.”

“No significant change in levels of urinary or serum aluminum were seen after vaccination (Table). Significant declines were noted postvaccination in serum iron (58.1%), manganese (25.9%), selenium (9.5%), and zinc (36.4%) levels, as was a significant increase in serum copper level (8.0%). A rise in selenium level was the only significant urine change. No significant postvaccine urinary or serum level changes were noted for phosphorus, sulfur, potassium, cobalt, nickel, molybdenum, nickel, or sodium. All participants had normal serum creatinine levels.

Note the changes in serum iron, manganese, selenium and zinc.

How Much Aluminum Is In Vaccines?

The FDA requires that Al concentrations be under 25 mcg/l in large volume parenteral drug products used in total parenteral nutrition for premature infants (due to immature kidney function). However, a single visit to the pediatrician yields much higher amounts of aluminum for all infants, regardless of weight, regardless of prematurity. Vaccines are parenteral products: administered or occurring elsewhere in the body than the mouth and alimentary canal (GI tract).

Aluminum Content of Pediatric Vaccines:

At Birth 250 mcg
2 Months 1225 mcg
4 Months 975 mcg
6 Months 1000 mcg
12 Months 600 mcg
15 Months 625 mcg
18 Months 250 mcg

Grand Total of 4,925 mcg of aluminum by 18 months of age.

Historical Use of Aluminum in Vaccines

Aluminum was first used as an adjuvant in vaccines in 1932. In early animal experiments, it was found to elicit a more powerful antibody response to the vaccine antigens.

For many decades there had been reports of serious reactions, including case studies of infants dying immediately after vaccination, or experiencing serious neurological harm.

Werne & Garrow reported on twins who died after DPT vaccine in 1946.

In 1955, Cockburn reported that “No immunization procedure is entirely free of risk from remote sequelae…but at present the problems which occupy most attention are the occurrence of convulsions and encephalopathies after pertussis vaccination and the reported association between inoculation and poliomyelitis with paralysis of the inoculated limb.”

In 1957, the British Ministry recommended aluminum-free vaccines.

Stateside, in October of 1958, Jed and Louise Roe’s six month old son Mark Addison Roe died suddenly in his bed, just two weeks after a doctor declared he was perfectly healthy. At that doctor visit Mark had a routine injection for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, and his polio shot. Mark’s parents developed and funded the Mark Addison Roe Foundation, which would later become the National SIDS foundation.

In Canada, a majority of the children prior to the 1960s were given vaccines without aluminum adjuvant due to health concerns.

In contrast, the Committee on Control of Infectious Diseases of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1964 recommended for the use of alum-precipitated DTP vaccines in the US.

In the 1970s more reports of sudden neurological disorders after vaccination. We see a spike in SIDS deaths, SIDS clusters.

Today, there are 146 licensed vaccines around the world that contain an Aluminum Salt adjuvant. SIDS is the leading cause of postneonatal death.

The Age of Aluminium

Chris Exley talking about Aluminum toxicity on The HighWire with Del Bigtree:

The beautiful documentary Injecting Aluminum about the history and health effects of Aluminum. Click to watch:

Watch Dr. Suzanne Humphries discuss Aluminum Toxicity:

Fluoride and Aluminum: How do they connect?

Bauxite, Arkansas was once considered the “Aluminum Capital of the World”. Founded in 1888, the town was known for an aluminum mine owned by ALCOA (Aluminum Company of America), and eventually became known for a health defect: Bauxite Teeth. Smelting bauxite into aluminum releases fluorides as a waste byproduct, which wound up in the town’s water supply, causing everyone to be poisoned just enough to mottle and stain their teeth.

The aluminum industry is the reason we have fluoride in our water today.

To learn more about ALCOA, and the relationship between Aluminum and Fluoride, watch these Fluoride Documentaries:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6kgBj6Djv8

Brief History Of Aluminum

Aluminum was so difficult to extract from its compounds that it was considered more precious and rare, and expensive, than gold or silver for much of the 19th century.

“Napoleon III, the first president of the French Second Republic beginning in 1848, proudly served his most honored guests using aluminum plates and cutlery, because it was such a rare metal, according to The Aluminum Association.”

By the 1880s, a new process was discovered for obtaining aluminum from aluminum oxide. Charles Martin Hall, an American chemist, and Paul L. T. Héroult, a French chemist, each invented this process independently in 1886. Héroult developed a new process that could cheaply obtain aluminum oxide from bauxite. Bauxite is a sedimentary rock that contains a large amount of aluminum hydroxide (Al₂O₃·3H₂O), along with other compounds.

In 1887, Austrian engineer Karl Josef Bayer developed a chemical process by which alumina can be extracted from bauxite, a widespread and naturally occurring aluminum ore. Both the Bayer and Hall-Herout processes are still used today to produce nearly all the world’s aluminum. (source)

Aluminum Timeline

SOURCES:

1. The aluminium content of infant formulas remains too high
2. Aluminium content of some foods and food products in the USA, with aluminium food additives
3. “Effect of Routine Vaccination on Aluminum and Essential Element Levels in Preterm Infants”
4. “Towards an understanding of the adjuvant action of aluminium”
5. “Systematic review of potential health risks posed by pharmaceutical, occupational and consumer exposures to metallic and nanoscale aluminum, aluminum oxides, aluminum hydroxide and its soluble salts”
6. What is the risk of aluminium as a neurotoxin?
7. Prevention of severe reactions and injurious effects of vaccinations in using antigens containing aluminum