Are We all Contamined with Aluminium?

“Women are strong […] Strong, full stop.” So begins an advert with almost militaristic overtones. In black and white, we see a series of women. With masterful, even hard, expressions, they have everything under control. The advert concludes: “Twice the protection of the leading anti-perspirant […] new Sure Maximum Protection. Unapologetically strong.” What exactly makes this deodorant so ‘strong’? An extra helping of aluminium, more specifically something called ‘Aluminum Zirconium Tetrachlorohydrex GLY’.

Aluminium is extremely reactive: it binds instantly with skin cells and blocks sweat glands. Armpits remain dry as long as this or any other aluminium-based deodorant is being used. According to parent company Unilever, the exact amount of aluminium chlorohydrate contained in Sure Maximum Protection is a “trade secret”, but it is known to comprise up to 20% of many deodorants.

Potential side-effects that skin contact with aluminium (and intensive contact with other parts of the body) is feared to cause are still a matter of general dispute. According to the latest scientific findings, however, simply giving the lightweight metal a clean bill of health is no longer an option – something made clear in medical journalist Bert Ehgartner’s painstakingly researched book Dirty Little Secret: Die Akte Aluminium (Dirty Little Secret: The Aluminium Files, currently only available in German). He found that aluminium effortlessly penetrates the skin, with aluminium ions spreading to the bloodstream and the organs. The body retains far more aluminium this way than if it were consumed orally.

According to Dr Phillipa Darbre, an associate professor and cancer researcher at the University of Reading (near London, England), liquid-filled cavities found in women’s breasts and diagnosed as ‘benign cysts’ are the result using aluminium-based deodorants. Darbre points out that if aluminium can block sweat glands, logically it would also block the flow of tissue fluid. Many women are said to have reported the disappearance of their cysts to her, after ceasing to use aluminium deodorants. In the lab, Darbre exposed breast cancer cells to a tiny amount of aluminium chlorohydrate (the same form present in standard deodorants) for a year. One year on, tumour-like growths had formed – “Early-stage breast cancer,” as she put it – in contrast to the cell cultures that had not been treated with aluminium.

Other studies have produced similar results, which recently provoked a government body to act for the first time: the ANSM – the French institution that assesses the health risks of drugs and other consumer products – has demanded that the maximum proportion of aluminium in deodorants and anti-perspirants be drastically reduced, to 0.6% from current levels of up to 20%.

In recent times, the number of new breast cancer cases has exploded.1 60% are diagnosed in the area near the armpit. The aluminium contained in deodorants cannot be ruled out as a cause.

(Eco) Sunscreens: Nano & ALU

Aluminium can also be found in suntan lotions, even those marketed as ‘natural products’. More often than not, their chemical colourants are replaced by tiny titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nano-pigments. These are frequently covered with a layer of aluminium oxide or silicon oxide to increase their reflectivity. Even sunscreen for babies, as you might find in a health food shop, frequently contains these additives, because they increase the sun protection factor. Some sunscreens contain so much aluminium that, with generous application, a child can be dosed with almost a gram of it over the course of a day. According to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA – a body that is known for putting the industry above consumers), that is equivalent to one thousand times the maximum safe in­­gestible aluminium dose per kilo of body-weight /day.

Nanoparticles and aluminium-based ingredients in ‘natural’ sun protection products demonstrate the absurd consequences of a media-driven panic about the ‘deadly sun’ that has long since become scientifically untenable. This hysteria – as in similar cases – serves the interests of the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries, not the public. Only exposure to sunlight provides us with sufficient vitamin D, which is essential for our skin, bones, internal organs, and general wellbeing. More and more doctors recommend daily – natural, unprotected – exposure to sunlight whenever possible, in order to stock up on vitamin D (which is actually a hormone rather than a vitamin)2 . If you let your skin adjust to the sun gradually, if your body isn’t overly acidic, and have good judgement, then you’ll know how long you can safely spend in the sun. Natural, good value alternatives to suntan lotions include sesame, coconut, and olive oils.

Even though aluminium is the most commonly found metal in the Earth’s crust (it’s the third most abundant element after oxygen and silicon), it was only identified in 1808, by the British chemist Sir Humphrey Davy. He was, however, unable to isolate it. Commercial production has only been possible since the 1880s. Aluminium is one of the most reactive elements on Earth and is found almost exclusively as a compound, i.e. as an ore. In contrast to other metals such as arsenic and copper, aluminium is not required for any biological function. Correspondingly, the human body does not recognise it, and has “no defensive or protective mechanism against the aggressive metal ions,” as Ehgartner quoted from Christopher Exley, an aluminium researcher from Keele University in the UK with decades of experience in the field.

It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without aluminium. It’s a key component in cars, aircraft, and power cables, but we also encounter the metal almost everywhere in daily life – and in places where we might least expect it. It can be found in drinking water, coffee machines (including as an anticaking agent in powdered milk), baking powder, salt, as part of coffee capsules, and in our food in the form of additives (e.g. as a stabiliser in egg white and crystallised fruit, in the production of biscuits, or as a separating agent in nutritional supplements). Not to mention in lipstick, cookware, those omnipresent drinks cans, aluminium foil (particularly with damp, acidic, and sour foods!), and in food colourants – and not forgetting its presence in medication and vaccines. As a rule: the more naturally, healthily, and environmentally-consciously we live, the better our chances of avoiding these aluminium traps. In Ehgartner’s opinion, aluminium may well be the long sought-for environmental factor that has precipitated the shocking rise in ‘diseases of civilisation’.

Vaccinations: GMO & ALU

Thanks to its extremely high reactivity, aluminium is used as an adjuvant in around two-thirds of all vaccines – a practice that has already lasted more than eight decades. In mainstream medicine’s idealised view, aluminium binds with the antigen and releases it only slowly, causing localised inflammation. This increases production of antibodies and strengthens the immune response – with the aluminium salt used being in all other respects completely harmless. This interpretation of events must now be seen as false. Injected aluminium is much more toxic than aluminium consumed in the diet – bypassing the digestive tract, it is absorbed by the body almost in its entirety.

If mainstream medicine were to undertake serious research into the danger this metal presents, it would soon have to admit culpability for decades of negligence and failure for which many people have paid all too high a price. Once the house of cards of the ‘completely harmless adjuvant, aluminium’ lie starts to collapse, it won’t be long before the foundations of the myth of ‘vaccination as preventive medicine’ start to crumble.

Highlights of Ehgartner’s book include the fact that the pharmaceutical industry is the main donor to the Democrat and Republican parties in US elections. He also shows how new vaccines have been transformed from a demanding and risky part of the medical business into worldwide bestsellers and cash cows. Every child in the USA now receives a vaccination against hepatitis B at birth. Vaccines against pneumococcus and cervical cancer3 too are not just relatively new, and exponentially more expensive than traditional vaccines: almost without exception they combine two key characteristics – they contain aluminium, and they are genetically modified.

Globally, large-scale vaccination campaigns have been accompanied by a series of new autoimmune illnesses, and an explosion in cases of chronic illness. According to a comprehensive report produced in collaboration by several universities, an astonishing 43% of all children up to age 17 in the USA suffer from one or more chronic illness (obesity is not factored into these numbers). For years, infant and childhood mortality has been rising at the same time as life expectancy has been falling. The situation in (Central) Europe is still far from this extreme, but that’s the way it’s heading, particularly due to a violent increase in chronic illness.

In the 1990s, a new disease was identified in France: macrophagic myofasciitis, or MMF. Its appearance coincided with a nationwide hepatitis B vaccination campaign. Symptoms included muscular pain, periods of extreme fatigue, dizziness, headaches, feelings of discomfort in the limbs, and in some cases impaired vision. Researchers at the neuromuscular illness clinic at the University of Paris East were able to identify sites of extreme inflammation during biopsies on muscle samples even years later. The tissue was densely packed with macrophages, i.e. the immune system’s ‘scavenger’ cells. These scavengers were stuffed with aluminium particles. Years after the hepatitis B vaccination campaign, a wave of multiple sclerosis (MS) cases were diagnosed. Today, ever greater numbers in the medical community are joining the dots between the vaccination and this serious illness.

Gardasil and Cervarix, two vaccines against human papillomavirus (HPV), both use far stronger aluminium adjuvants than customary. During the test phase for Cervarix, an alarmingly high number of miscarriages was noted among participants – the vaccine was refused a licence in the US, yet still granted one in the EU. Both vaccines have induced new, previously unknown autoimmune diseases in numerous young women – including control groups in which aluminium-based adjuvants were used. Some women even died shortly after vaccination.

Dr Diane Harper, a well-known professor of medicine in America, who was part of the studies into the licensing of both the HPV vaccines, spoke surprisingly openly to Ehgartner: “It’s possible that aluminium causes long-lasting side-effects that accumulate over time. We know that there is an epidemic of dementia, which has struck the first baby boomer generation as it reaches retirement. We know that this generation is one of the most heavily vaccinated in human history.”

Aluminium is a neurotoxin. In experiments on animals, it is used to induce model illnesses such as allergies and asthma. For Dr Chris Shaw, professor of ophthalmology at the University of British Columbia in Canada, the general potential for aluminium to cause illness is all too logical: “Even if we’re talking about minimal amounts in vaccines, those minimal amounts can have dramatic consequences for the immune system.” Nevertheless, when it comes to aluminium-based additives, vaccine manufacturers effectively have carte blanche. According to EU guidelines, they are absolved from participating in any kind of safety study, even when combining aluminium to form new compounds. As Ehgartner emphasises, this leeway is unique in the entire pharmaceutical industry. There are absolutely no plans to undertake serious research on the effects of vaccinations (as took place in the case of artificial hormones, which resulted in their damaging side-effects being revealed). Children who have not been vaccinated – quelle surprise – are healthier on average than those who have been, and, unlike the latter, are capable of enduring an extremely high fever before fully recovering much more quickly.

Population Reduction

Millions upon millions of euros and dollars have been poured into the decoding of ‘dangerous’ genes, and into the ‘Alzheimer’s vaccine’. At the same time, funding for research into the effects of aluminium has been frozen. Nevertheless, one article after another is currently appearing in the medical journals on the topic: aluminium is implicated in causing illnesses such as dementia, Parkinson’s, breast cancer and MS. Vaccinations could well be at least partially responsible for chronic ailments such as diabetes, Crohn’s disease, and inflammatory brain conditions such as autism and ADHD, with aluminium seeming to play a significant role – to put it mildly.

A marked increase in publications and public statements made regarding the dangers of aluminium as an additive in vaccines stands in stark contrast with the positions taken by high-ranking doctors and the authorities. The authorities have long since been ‘captured’ – emotionally, professionally, and also financially – by the vaccine manufacturers. The pharmaceutical industry provides the bulk of the funding for the
regulatory bodies and licensing agencies, nationally and internationally. Top experts, in diabetes for example, are also in the pay of the industry. To avoid public outcry, critical examination of vaccines must be avoided at all costs. Scientists from other fields who have published works critical of vaccination, or make public comment, are exposed to smear campaigns.

Vaccination campaigns in particular have repeatedly been linked to population reduction. Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates spoke on his foundation’s website of a “decade of vaccines”, promising to provide “all children with the necessary vaccines.” He also made what he saw as being a main benefit of vaccination unmistakeably clear at the 2010 TED Conference, implying that vaccines must be viewed as a weapon against ‘overpopulation’4 : “The world today has 6.8 billion people, and that’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services [including abortion and sterilisation, author’s remark], we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15%.”5