Does Exposure to Aluminum Cause Alzheimer's Disease

TOXICS INFORMATION PROJECT (TIP)

P.O. Box 40572, Providence, RI 02906

Tel. 401-351-9193, E-Mail: TIP@toxicsinfo.org

(Lighting the way to Less Toxic Living)

Does Exposure to Aluminum

Cause Alzheimer's Disease?

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_216a.html

Dear Cecil: What's the straight dope on the aluminum-senility link? Is it true that deodorants and/or antiperspirants cause brain damage if they get in your bloodstream? --Very Nervous, Baltimore

Cecil replies: I first wrote about aluminum as a possible cause of Alzheimer's disease in 1983, and here it is all these years later and they're still not sure. But things don't look promising.

The deal is this. Aluminum is suspected of playing a role in Alzheimer's disease, a form of degenerative senile dementia thought to afflict 5-10 percent of all persons over 65. Victims of Alzheimer's have been found to have four times the normal concentration of aluminum in their brain cells. Aluminum is known to be a neurotoxin that can cause brain damage if you're exposed to it in sufficiently large amounts. The question is whether chronic exposure to small amounts can affect you. Despite lots of research, we still don't know. But several studies have shown that people exposed to higher-than-average amounts of aluminum tend to have higher rates of Alzheimer's.

It's obvious aluminum isn't the sole cause of Alzheimer's disease, since many people don't contract it, even in environments where they're exposed to high amounts of aluminum.

In fact, there's some indication that a predisposition to the disease may be hereditary. Thus, if one of your forebears had Alzheimer's, you may have inherited some genetic kink that makes you especially vulnerable to aluminum poisoning.

In any case, aluminum isn't easy to avoid. You can probably dump your aluminum cookware without too much trouble, but you'll find aluminum is also contained in many common antacids and antiperspirants. I note, for example, that my friendly bottle of Ban Basic here contains aluminum chloride and aluminum chlorhydrate. (Granted, you can now get aluminum-free deodorants.) Even more insidious, aluminum is added to many municipal water supplies to help remove floating debris. Aluminum is also found in household baking powder, self-rising flour, cake mix, pancake batter, and frozen dough (as sodium aluminum phosphate, a leavening agent); in nondairy creamers, table salt, and other powdered foods (as an anticaking ingredient); in processed cheese (as an emulsifier); and in hemorrhoid preparations (up to 50 percent aluminum hydroxide). The known human requirement for aluminum, you may be interested to know, is absolutely zero. Have a nice day, kids.

--CECIL ADAMS

ALUMINUM IN DRINKING WATER TIED TO ALZHEIMER’S

By Jacqueline Stenson

Monday, April 14, 2003 05:54 PM ET

www.laleva.cc/environment/aluminum_alzheimers.html

SAN DIEGO (Reuters Health) Adding support to a controversial theory linking aluminum with Alzheimer's disease, new research indicates the disease is more common in regions of northwest Italy where levels of aluminum in drinking water are highest. And when the investigators studied the effects of one form of the metal on two types of human cells in the lab, they found it hastened cell death." We were absolutely surprised by these results," said study author Dr. Paolo, a researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles. "I did not expect any effect from aluminum. "In findings released here Monday at the annual Experimental Biology meeting, Prolo and colleagues focused on monomeric -- single molecule -- aluminum. This is the type that can be most easily absorbed by human cells, he said.

While there have been suggestions that aluminum cookware might pose a risk for Alzheimer's, the type of aluminum used in pots and pans consists of multiple molecules and does not appear to affect human cells, according to Prolo. "There is almost no evidence that the cookware is dangerous," he said. When the researchers tested water in regions of northwest Italy in 1998, they found that total aluminum levels -- including monomeric and other types of aluminum -- ranged from 5 to 1,220 micrograms per liter, while monomeric aluminum levels alone ranged from 5 to 300 micrograms per liter.

Environmental officials generally recommended that total aluminum levels be below 200 micrograms per liter, Prolo noted. After comparing this data to death rates from Alzheimer's in those regions, the researchers found that the disease was more common in areas with the highest levels of monomeric aluminum.

Back in the lab, Prolo and colleagues then tested the effects of monomeric aluminum on human immune-system cells and bone cancer cells. Ideally, human brain cells would be tested but these are not readily available because a biopsy of a patient's brain is necessary to acquire them, he said. "We found that a very low quantity of aluminum added to our cell cultures was modifying cellular processes" like normal cell death, Prolo told Reuters Health. When the aluminum was paired with beta-amyloid, a protein found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, the combination killed off even more cells.

Because aluminum could kill both types of human cells, these findings raise the question

of whether aluminum is potentially involved in other diseases, Prolo said. But much more research is needed to understand how the metal does or does not affect people, he added.

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