In the aluminum age, it is clearly unpalatable for aluminum, the globe’s most successful metal, to be implicated in human disease. It is unpalatable because for approximately 100 years human beings have reaped the rewards of the most abundant metal of the Earth’s crust without seriously considering the potential consequences for human health. The aluminum industry is a pillar of the developed and developing world and irrespective of the tyranny of human exposure to aluminum it cannot be challenged without significant consequences for businesses, economies, and governments. However, no matter how deep the dependency or unthinkable the withdrawal, science continues to document, if not too slowly, a burgeoning body burden of aluminum in human beings. Herein, I will make the case that it is inevitable both today and in the future that an individual’s exposure to aluminum is impacting upon their health and is already contributing to, if not causing, chronic diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. This is the logical, if uncomfortable, consequence of living in the aluminum age.
Keywords: aluminium, Alzheimer’s disease, human exposure, neurodegenerative disease, body burden
Citation: Exley C (2014) Why industry propaganda and political interference cannot disguise the inevitable role played by human exposure to aluminum in neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease. Front. Neurol. 5:212. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2014.00212
Received: 30 July 2014; Accepted: 05 October 2014;
Published online: 27 October 2014.
Edited by:
Christopher Ariel Shaw, University of British Columbia, CanadaReviewed by:
Nelson Silva Filho, Universidade Estadual Paulista, BrazilCopyright: © 2014 Exley. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Christopher Exley, The Birchall Centre, Lennard-Jones Laboratories, Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG, UK e-mail: c.exley@keele.ac.uk