Aluminum and Vaccines - What Is Worth Knowing

What I learned about aluminum today:

People who are against vaccines (those shots that save millions of lives) claim that many of the vaccines contain aluminum. That is true. So do soil, water, air, fruits and vegetables, fish, meats, cooking utensils, cosmetics and cheeseburgers. The average person consumes 2 to 8 mg of aluminum per day. Automatically, the body flushes most of it out.

I personally do not cook with aluminum, nor do I take antacids or use baking powder with aluminum. I am learning where else I can cut down on aluminum and other elements that can collect in the brain or body. I do however, believe in vaccinations and have no qualms about the small amount of aluminum in some of the shots. Most of that minute amount gets flushed out of the body. 

During the first 6 months of life, babies could receive about 4 milligrams of aluminum from vaccines. During the same period, babies will also receive about 10 milligrams of aluminum in breast milk and about 40 milligrams in infant formula. Shall we stop breast feeding because of the 10 mg of aluminum?  It doesn't make sense, does it.  Vaccines protect, breast milk protects. Breast milk contains more aluminum than vaccines.

I thought it was kind of funny to blame the mothers' breast milk! Some antacids contain up to 100 mg of aluminum per dose. Think about the antacid you do not worry about at 100 mg., the antacid you might take two of every few hours, and then compare it with the vaccines given to a baby that total 4 mg of aluminum.

Aspirin with an enteric-coating has aluminum too! (The aluminum helps the aspirin travel past the stomach where the aspirin might cause stomach bleeding, and dissolve later.) Some aluminum is released into the environment from coal-fired power plants and incinerators. Why are the anti-vaxers even talking about the aluminum used to make the vaccine dose effective? It stimulates the immune response so the baby will become immune to those diseases for which he/she is being vaccinated. 

All of this information came from the CDC Website.  None of it is hidden.




After posting the above on Facebook, I received a response that no aluminum should be in vaccines at all.  I would have to agree and disagree.  They would not put aluminum in vaccines unless it performed an important function, especially with all the controversy. There are many things I want out of vaccines and we can request and petition if we choose, so that they will know we want them to search for substitutes.  But getting that minute amount of aluminum in our systems is better than not being vaccinated and spreading dangerous diseases.

Here are the vaccines that do use aluminum:  vaccines that prevent hepatitis A, hepatitis B, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b, human papillomavirus and pneumococcus.   Most of us and our children do not get all of these vaccines, but certainly the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine is important.  1 in 20 who gets diphtheria dies of the disease.  1 in 5 who gets tetanus dies.  Vaccinations save lives.

My grandfather died of tuberculosis (other countries must vaccinate against this disease - the U.S. does not currently have a problem with tuberculosis) and left a little boy shuffled between relatives and on the streets alone a lot of the time, until his mother remarried.  (She became the first female taxi-driver in Michigan and also took in sewing to make a living.)  Losing his father was pretty rough on my dad.  My dad was deaf in one ear due to mumps at age six.  It kept him from becoming a commercial pilot – one of his dreams in life. 
The vaccines that DO NOT use aluminum are the live viral vaccines:  the ones that prevent measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox and rotavirus. 

Aluminum is present in certain vaccines to improve the immune response.  Aluminum allows for lesser quantities of the vaccine and fewer doses.  Until they find a substitute, this is what needs to be used.