"paghat" wrote in message
news
In article , "Don K"
wrote:
Man-made aluminum & aluminates MIGHT have some involvement in the
development of alzheimers disease, though years back when Science
Digest
did a whole issue about it, looked like only about one out of ten
researchers thought it much likely.

Aluminum is an element and strictly speaking, is not something that
is man-made.

Pure aluminum does not exist in nature, & its existence was not even known
until 1808, & it was another 80 years before it could be extracted
affordably from boxite & alumina. Boxite is found just about everywhere in
nature; aluminum per se is not. When metalurgists first learned to purify
aluminum from boxite, it cost more per ounce than gold. Nowadays it costs
us here in the Northwest our salmon resources, there being no more salmon
runs at all in rivers & streams near aluminum plants.

Most mining involves dealing with nasty by-products.

A lot of gold is also obtained by refining ore thru all sorts of chemical
processes. Yet we don't refer to it as man-made gold. There's no
alchemy involved. It's just recovering the gold that is locked up
in other compounds.

Gold can be toxic to the liver and kidneys. Perhaps a prudent person
should stop wearing man-made gold while avoiding aluminum.

Don