By David Liu, Ph.D. and editing by Aimee Keenan-Greene

Over time, many studies have been done on the healthy effects of aluminum.

D.O. Carpenter from the School of Public Health University at Albany Rensselaer, NY reported in the International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health, 2001, that elevated aluminum levels in the blood are associated with dementia, which is similar to Alzheimer's disease.  Alzheimer's disease is also linked with high levels of aluminum levels in drinking water.

P. Altmann and colleagues from Oxford Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford compared 55 people who drank water contaminated with 20 tons of aluminum sulphate in an area in English with their 15 unaffected siblings to see how exposure to aluminum affected pFSIQ in these individuals.

The researchers found while pFSID was similar in both groups, the affected people performed significantly worse on the symbol digit coding test compared to their unaffected siblings, 52 versus 88.

The study was reported in the Sept 25, 1999 issue of British Medical Journal.

Another study led by D.M. White and colleagues from University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle and published in the July 1992 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine found professional exposure to aluminum resulted in "in-coordination, poor memory, impairment in abstract reasoning and depression".

Certain foods contain extremely high levels of  aluminum.

Salim M. Saiyed and Robert A Yokel of the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky reported in the March 2005 issue of Food Additives and Contaminants that aluminum content can range from less than 1 to 27,000 Mg per kg of food.

They found cheese, pancakes and waffles, baking powder, and some  pancake/waffle mixes and frozen products and ready to eat pancakes contained the highest levels of aluminum.

Specifically, cheese used in frozen pizzas such as pepperoni could contain as high as 650 mg per kg while veggies used in pizzas had as little as less than 6.9 mg per kg.  Not all types of cheese contained so much aluminum, but the majority of cheese were high in aluminum.

Aluminum in baking supplies, bakery products, pancakes and waffles was particularly higher. Baking powder and pancake mixes contained up to 28,000 mg per kg and 1200 mg per kg respectively.

Even non-dairy creamer powder and cocoa contained up to 590 mg aluminum per kg of food.

Aluminum salt may also be used in salt.  Nearly 200 mg aluminum  per kg can be present in salt and up to 70 mg per kg in pickle relish, according to the researchers.

According to JoAnne Struve, a consumer advocate at http://home.earthlink.net/~joannefstruve/index.html, the following foods contain high amounts of aluminum.

Microwave popcorn

Salted snacks

Hot cocoa mixes

Coffee creamers

Pickles and relish

Flour tortillas 

Pizza crust 

Muffins

Doughnuts 

Cookies

Pancakes 

Waffles

Cupcakes 

Cakes

Baking mixes

Brownies

Pastries 

Corn bread

Banana bread

Carrot bread

Dipping batter for fried foods

Food consumers need to know that many artificial colorings contain very high levels of aluminum.

Photo credit: wikipedia.org