Can aluminum foil cause alzheimers?

Question

I heard that it could...

Answer 1

In short: no- well at least many scientist believe that is the answer.

First let me give you a qoute from the Scientific American Website at www.sciam.com

"In the mind of many scientists, if aluminum plays a role it is most probably a secondary one. The reasoning for this position is based on the fact that aluminum is one of the most abundant and pervasive elements. It is found everywhere--it is in the water we drink, it is in the dust we breathe, it is in many of he substances we use every day such as coke in glass bottles, food preservatives, many cosmetics and food dyes. Even if we stop using pots and pans or underarm deodorants, it will be virtually impossible to avoid aluminum. Given this type of exposure of the general population, if aluminum is playing a major role then one would expect the numbers of people affected by Alzheimer's to be much higher than they are found in epidemiological studies."

Furthermore here is some background on the subject.

In the 1920s, as now, people spread spurious rumors about the alleged dangers of harmless products -- rumors that were often started by business interests trying to scare consumers away from buying their competitors' products and propagated by a gullible and grossly misinformed public.

One of the most virulent of these types of rumors in the 1920s was directed at any food-related product containing aluminum, particularly aluminum cookware and utensils.

In the 1920s aluminum was blamed for causing infantile paralysis, cancer, acute indigestion, gastritis, ulcers, and weakened teeth and bones (because it supposedly "attacked" calcium).

The rumors were given additional credence through the irony of claiming that the putative victims of aluminum poisoning were often doctors and cancer specialists themselves -- naturally, they were the very same doctors who had declared aluminum to be safe, thus demonstrating the old adage that one reaps what one sows.

Some of the more widespread anecdotes demonstrating the alleged dangers of aluminum circulating back then were:

Three navy men died after eating fried oysters that had been stored in aluminum. Shortly thereafter, the government required the Navy to dispose of all aluminum utensils.

A doctor who had contracted "cancer of the face" stopped using aluminum, and within a few months his cancer had miraculously disappeared. When he later made the mistake of eating squash that had been prepared in aluminum cookware, his cancer returned within a few days.

Alfred W. McCann (a "scientist" who was touted as "the world's greatest food authority" and wrote books with such fright-inducing titles as Starving America and This Famishing World) denounced "foolish talk about the so-called poisonous properties of aluminum cooking ware"; when he died suddenly in January 1931, rumormongers attributed his death to his use of aluminum utensils and cookware.


One of the primary movers behind the "aluminum is deadly" rumors was one Howard J. Force, a self-proclaimed chemist who cranked out ominously-titled pamphlets such as Poisons Formed by Aluminum Cooking Utensils and Are You Heading for the Last Round-Up?
Force profited from selling his scare literature both to a frightened public and to the makers and sellers of stainless steel pots and pans, earthenware kitchen utensils, and other non-aluminum products.

As a postscript, we might note that perhaps echoes of these old aluminum rumors can still be found in the current common belief that Alzheimer's disease is caused or exacerbated by exposure to aluminum (particularly through the use of aluminum cookware).

There is currently no hard evidence to implicate aluminum as a major cause of Alzheimer's disease, and the belief that aluminum is a major cause was largely the product of errors in test procedures.

Answer 2

Though many non scientific groups claim that it does because some scientists in 1965 did some experiments in which they induced alzheimer's in mice after injecting it with aluminum, which doesnt equal to us using aluminum foils.
I found one scientific article which shows that "the contact of food with aluminum cooking utensils cannot alone raise plasma aluminum concentrations to the millimolar levels required to decrease brain glucose metabolism. Non dietary mechanisms are operating which lead to the accumulation of tissue aluminum, since most of dietary aluminum is excreted by the kidney."
But there is this website you might find interesting. Though I do caution you that unless proper scientific experiments are done, you should not believe in all these hell raisers who do so with little evidence.
http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/Facts_about_dementia/Risk_factors/info_aluminium.htm

Answer 3

NO