Divulgación de Grado de Química, UCO: Aluminium

Aluminium - Is it safe?

What is Aluminum really?

Aluminium is a silvery looking metal that belongs to the group 13 of the periodic table. It is soft and very light. It is the third most usual element in the earths crust and the most usual metal. It has been used by humanity for ages. The first time we have proof that aluminium was used what in the ancient Greece, where they used alum, a type of aluminium with a kind of salt. They used it for dyeing, antiseptic properties and to defend the city. It has gotten more and more important with time.
From the 18th century aluminium had a “boom”. People discovered how to get aluminium in its pure form. There was a man named Friedrich Wohler that found a way to make aluminium available for the everyday people. As you read we will show you how much we actually use aluminium!

Figure 1: The figure shows the use of aluminium in the world in 2017

Aluminium in our daily life

Lets pretend its a regular day in your life. You wake up and put on some makeup and some deodorant (antiperspirant). You fry some eggs in a pan and heat some beans in a pot. You open a can of soda. It rains outside and you can hear the rain running through the gutter. The rest of the food you in foil and put in the fridge. All of these things contains aluminium, so it's almost impossible to not be in contact with aluminium. There is also plenty of other places you will find aluminium, like fireworks, airplanes, in water-treatment, food additives, antiperspirants and medicine for neutralizing stomach acid.

Picture 1,2 and 3: The pictures shows how many places you actually can fin aluminiuAluminium does your body really accumulate?

There are many aspects you have to take to account to determine whether you will be harmed if you are exposed to aluminium. Examples of these aspects are how much aluminium you are exposed to, how long you are exposed to it, how you get in contact with it and which other chemicals that you also are exposed to. You also have to take into account that there is differences between age, sex, diet, family traits, lifestyle and in which health state you're in.
Unprocessed foods like fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat contain very little aluminum.
However, the aluminum may be added during the food processing. Examples of this is flour, baking powder, coloring agents and anti caking compounds.

Since every of us is exposed to this element everyday, we may wonder if some of it comes to our body and if yes, how much it is. The research conducted in the US shows, that average adult there consumes 7-9mg of aluminium per day in the food one eats.

To start our considerations about the aluminum’s influence on our health, it good to take a look at its abilities of accumulation in our bodies. As a starter we can tell you that most aluminium in food, water and medicines you take will leave your body rapidly in the feces. You might also have gotten small amounts of aluminium in the bloodstream, but that will leave your body when you pee.

Should we be afraid of aluminium?

It may sound scary to eat aluminum, but scientist do not directly claim that it is harmful for us. If you search in the internet, you may find uncertain some theories of negative effect of aluminum on our health. One them for instance says that drinking a lot of leaf tea with a lemon juice may cause the Alzheimer’s disease. There is still no proof weather its harmful. Indeed, tea leaves are naturally rich in aluminum. Adding some drops of lemon juice to a cup with freshly brewed may release the aluminum from those tea leaves straight to your drink. There are some researcher who found a connection between drinking this aluminum-enriched tea and higher presence of this element in brains of Alzheimer's patients. Nevertheless, other studies on this field claim this theory not to be true.

If you have a kidney disease you may store a lot of alumunium in your body because the disease will lead to less alumnium being removed by the urine. Some people with the disease get kidney disorders develop brain or bone diseases that some doctors believes is developed because of too high levels of aluminium. Lung effects have been seen in animals that was tested after they got exposed to aluminium dust. The research couldn't determine if the effects came because of aluminium of the fact that they did breath in a lot of dust.

Some studies showed that the nervous system is sensitive to aluminium toxicity. It is not proven that there is damage after high intake of aluminum orally, but animal test showed that the animals that were exposed to high doses of aluminium, didn't perform well in tests that was testing strength of grip or the amount of moving around.

Conclution

As a conclution we can say that in general we have been exposed to aluminium for a very long time with no proven harms. This counts for people in good health and in a normal exponation of aluminium. Therefor we can say that if you dont have any special conditions concerning your healt, you can safely drink sofa from the can, eat fried eggs from pans and use baking powder. The benefits of aluminium are so big, so keep using aluminium for what its worth, and keep recyceling it, so we wont loose the benefits of this amazing metal.
By Anna Teigen Schultheiss