In article , Salty Thumb
wrote:

(Seamus Ma' Cleriec) wrote in
om:

I've been a lurker, but I just can't resist my 2 cents - Aluminum is
the most common element found in the earth's crust. Just about any

If you care to change 'element' to 'metal' or 'most' to 'third most',
I'll agree with you.

water which is not otherwise purified (distilled or ion exchanged) is
going to contain Aluminum.

How much and in what chemical form?

The increase in concentration through contact with cans and pots will
*insignificant*.

How did you come to this conclusion? Are you also saying naturally
occuring aluminum compounds and artifically leached aluminum have the
same biological reactivity?

People who simply don't like to believe humanity has toxified our own
environment to a level of criminal insanity never even know which
questions to ask, because if they asked the right questions they wouldn't
come up with such dumb answers. The first question here would be HOW MUCH
exposure to alluminum can be blamed on use of alluminum cookware. The
answer confessed to by the aluminum industry itself is: approximately 3.5
milligrams injested per day by anyone who cooks in aluminum. It's more if
they cook tomato sauce, other acidic stuff, acidic foods, or leave cooked
foods in the pots longer than it takes to cook them, or later eat
leftovers that had not been removed from said cookware. The follow-up
questions would include, would removing 3.5 milligrams per day provide any
protection whatsoever? How MANY sources would have to be cut out of one's
"diet" to get down to a possibly-safe daily exposure? These actually do
have pretty easy to understand answers.

The sensible answer would be: IF the ONLY source of aluminum you removed
from your diet was that 3.5 milligrams per day, you've done next to
nothing to protect yourself. But if you've filtered the water & avoided
aluminated medications, WHY ON EARTH would you not also do the very simple
added measure of lowering your daily dose another 3.5 milligrams by
getting rid of those ten-cent Thrift Store aluminum pots?

Very likely the ultimate correct question would be: What is the minimum
dietary exposure that is 100% guaranteed to be safe for everyone? The
answer to that one is THERE IS NO GUARANTEED SAFE MINIUM; no science as
yet concludes categorically that eating even 3.5 milligrams per day ON
PURPOSE is an intelligent option. However, more conservatively & without
absolutes, World Health Organization posits the POSSIBILITY that 50
milligrams daily MIGHT for MOST people be safe (there are conditions
including downs syndrome where no level of exposure is apt to be safe).

IF cookware were your ONLY exposure, then you'd be well under the
possibly/probably safe level of 50 milligrams; but with other exposures,
this just isn't so. Even two other exposures -- say, if you take on
average one antacid per day, & one buffered asprin per day -- that could
already bump up around 48 milligrams exposure, & adding just the aluminum
cookware pushes you over the top. ALL sources of aluminum in the diet over
which we are capable of exerting control should (and WILL) be removed from
the diet by anyone who has a lick of sense. Get rid of a milligram here, a
milligram there, at some point it does add up to a RELATIVE if never 100%
point of safety.

Now Health Canada takes a position that aluminum cookware exposure is only
2 milligrams per day (with many provisos: IF the pots are kept
scrupulously clean & dry between uses; IF the interior is not worn or
pockmocked; IF you don't stir to the bottom with a metal utensil; IF you
rarely to never cook acidic foods; IF you never cook leafy vegetables
(which absorb more aluminum so that less of the aluminum is poored off
after boiling something); IF you don't use all the boiledwater such as in
a soup; IF food is never stored in the aluminum or cooked for any great
length of time. All these provisos met, then H.C. estimates 2 milligrams
exposure, day in, day out, & much greater if, say, you make any kind of
soup & refrigerate it in the cook pot & reheat the leftovers. But going
with the the best-case scenario, then that one buffered asprin, one
antacid, plus cookware combined will weigh in minimally at 50 milligrams,
leaving you no safe wiggle room for further exposure in case you actually
need two buffered asprins or eat a carrot or some spinach that could well
contain a half-milligram of aluminum, or if you' change or clean the
filter often enough so the tapwater is killin' ya too.

If someone told you you could lick old black & white photographs & not get
enough cyanide to drop dead at once, would you go oh goody & start
licking? Apparently some people would -- when it comes to such an easy
choice as using better pots & pans to save one from that minumum 2 mg &
probably 3.5 mg exposure.

IF you do not use buffered asprin, IF you use a Tums antacid without
aluminates, IF you have an EPA approved filter for tapwater, THEN you have
lowered your daily exposure to aluminum to 10 milligrams per day
(according to Health Canada extimates). Get rid of the cheap-ass
white-trash toxic cookware, you're down to 8 milligrams OR LESS. That
leaves primarily the "natural" exposures from bauxite that's everywhere,
such as in fresh veggies, but finally at a level so far under the POSSIBLY
safe 50 milligram per day that it would finally be a reasonable assumption
that Nature just seriously is not the one killing us. Insisting it's
perfectly all right to KEEP some of our man-made exposures is the problem.
Perhaps the more senile the sufferer, the more certain he'll become it's
okay.

-paghat the ratgirl

PS: Milligram estimates taken chiefly from Health Canada's leaflet "Safe
Use of Cook Ware" February 2003. This is a highly conservative document --
like the FDA, H.C. is conservative enough that it only moves definitively,
as it finally did against mad cow disease, after a major economic
catastrophe forces them to. Hence the same cookware leaflet asserts that
it's perfectly safe to eat Teflon chips & scrapings because they are
chemically inert. obviously the leaflet was written by someone who knew
his metals but not much else, or he would've heard of polymer fume fever
in humans & PTFE toxicosis in birds both caused by Teflon, plus PFOA
destruction of liver & reproductive organs in animal-modeled tests,
indicating teflon may pose special risks to women of childbearing age.
Nowadays not even DuPont claims it isn't toxic, they just pretend the
levels of exposures are safe IF your teflon never becomes particularly hot
& IF you never clean or scrape the bottom with anything even slightly
abbrasive.

Also note that Aluminum develops a patina of Aluminum Oxide (*) which
is highly insoluable.

What happens when you apply acid or a catalytic agent that dissolves the
patina?

* aka corundum - same stuff as rubies and sapphire

I'll agree that the Al-O bonds in Al2O3 are quite strong even when
developed as a patina, but considering it inexpertly, that seems
analogous to saying graphite and diamonds have the same hardness.

Thanks for the 2 cents, but I think I'll need at least a dollar.

-- Salty

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/