OPINION:
Passengers flying out of Los Angeles International Airport began to notice something odd last summer: There isn’t a single shop or vending machine where you can buy a regular plastic bottle of water. The airport authority ordered a phase-out at the end of June, following San Francisco’s lead. Now aluminum cans are the only practical option left, and travelers will come to regret it.
A decades-long string of scientific studies suggests aluminum is destined for a place on the list of materials associated with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. That could put canned water companies like Mananalu, owned by the actor Jason Momoa, in a tight spot. Bigger canned brands like Liquid Death might have some explaining to do too, as research provides new concerns.
This kind of progress might feel familiar. Can you remember when margarine and vegetable shortening were in everyone’s kitchens? They were considered benign until scientists and governments declared war on trans fat. Eggs and butter, once pilloried as cholesterol disasters, are no longer worth worrying about. For some, they’re part of a low-carb keto diet.
History may repeat itself with aluminum playing the trans-fat role as we come to accept it’s more harmful than we ever imagined. Children may be at risk too. Those 5 and under who are tested for allergies have up to a 5% chance of being allergic to aluminum. That’s according to the American Contact Dermatitis Society, which named aluminum its 2022 Allergen of the Year.
Put this in perspective. The federal government’s National Center for Health Statistics says that in the same age group, 4.4% of kids have some kind of food allergy. This means preschoolers with aluminum allergies might outnumber those who can’t be anywhere near peanuts.
There is also significant evidence of an aluminum-Alzheimer’s link coming from biomedical research labs. When scientists find a promising chemical compound that they hope will delay or reverse dementia, it is often tested on mice before any human tries it. They first have to give the animals Alzheimer’s. The most common way to do that is to feed them a diet that is high in aluminum salts.
Read that again. In lab animals, high concentrations of aluminum cause Alzheimer’s disease.
This is so well understood in the scientific community that the Google Scholar database includes hundreds of references to the phrase “aluminum-induced Alzheimer’s disease.” The idea goes back at least as far as 1973, when Canadian scientists found aluminum in the brains of some Alzheimer’s patients in nearly the same concentration as they were seeing in their animal experiments. Fifty years later, scientists are still publishing their research on the subject and the official line from governments is that it hasn’t been proved — yet.
There is universal agreement that the withered parts of human Alzheimer’s brains are full of aluminum deposits. Pathologists can see it when performing autopsies. With the right kind of fluorescent stain, it shines like orange glitter under a microscope.
The bottom line is a chicken-or-egg question. Does aluminum cause or accelerate Alzheimer’s and other dementias, or do these diseases create the conditions necessary for aluminum to accumulate? It could be decades before there’s a definitive answer, and it might come too late to help the next generation of patients. They’re not all old people: Some show signs of dementia as early as age 40.
For premature infants, people with kidney disease, burn victims and adults who are fed intravenously, even tiny amounts of aluminum salts in their drugs can be catastrophic. Larger doses can accelerate dementia quickly. Researchers who followed aluminum foundry workers in Indonesia found that 70% of them were cognitively impaired — just from being around aluminum.
A scientific reckoning about this “everywhere” metal is headed our way. When it gets here, leaders of the Los Angeles airport authority won’t be the only ones with red faces. The Liquid Death company, which sells water in nothing but aluminum cans, might conclude its branding is more prophetic than clever.
• Rick Berman serves as president of RBB Strategies.
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