Conference Exposes Health Impact of Aluminum: Today’s Most Prevalent Environmental Toxin

Every other year, for more than two decades, a small group of 70 or so scientists have been meeting at different locales across the globe to discuss their speciality: aluminum and its effects on living things. The science of a metal used in industries from airplane manufacturing to food packaging may sound tedious, but this three-day Keele meeting (named for Keele University in the United Kingdom where it originated) produces a treasure trove of valuable information about the health impact of aluminium exposure. It’s a conference of the latest science that the $186 billion aluminum industry denies and public health agencies pretend does not exist. The 12th Annual Keele Meeting on Aluminum last week in Vancouver, Canada, sponsored by the Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute, was no exception. Scientists from 16 countries discussed the latest research about how aluminum impacts plants, animals and humans. We inhale it in pollution, consume it in processed foods, slather it on in toiletries and inject it into ourselves and our babies in vaccines. Neurotoxic aluminium, according to increasing amount of scientific evidence, may stay in the body where it breaches protective barriers, induces wildly oxidative processes and fires inflammation, disrupts genetic transcription, impairs metabolism, accumulates in brain and breasts and testes, is linked to cancer, infertility, Alzheimer’s disease and anxious, aggressive and autistic behaviour.