Periodically our people are disturbed by the agitation of some self-constituted health authority who warns against the use of aluminum cooking utensils. The claims made against the use of such utensils are based upon the slight solubility of aluminum in the foods cooked therein. Faddists make a variety of charges: (1) That food cooked in aluminum acts as a slow poison. (2) That the use of such food is provocative of cancer. (3) That vitamins and such nutritive and health-protective constituents of foodstuff are destroyed by cooking in aluminum utensils. (4) That anemia results from the continued use of food cooked in aluminum. (5) That the use of food cooked in aluminum vessels induces sterility.
Some of these statements are based upon ignorance, some are the result of misconception of scientific facts, and some, no doubt, are of prejudicial origin, and are advocated by those who stand to gain financially by the acceptance of their theories.
The first cooking utensils of aluminum were made in 1892, and their general use has grown as the cost of aluminum has been reduced. About 1912 the question was first raised about the hygienic effect of aluminum kitchenware. Since that date extensive research has been carried out to determine the effects of aluminum salts in food. An excellent summary of this research is given in Bulletin No. 3, Bibliographic Series, Published by the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The allegation that the use of aluminum utensils is provocative of cancer has been dismissed as absurd by carcinologists in all countries. Sir Leonard Hill (Science Supplement 73, 12) states that "there is no reliable evidence, experimental, statistical, or clinical, which would indicate a causal correlation between cancer and the absence or presence or the excess of any dietary constituents. Sensational statements to the contrary are unfounded and ill-considered, and serve only to alarm the public."
Although an extensive scientific literature exists which substantiates the statement that aluminum cooking utensils are without harmful effect, a research problem was undertaken in the laboratories of Emmanuel Missionary College, to demonstrate at firsthand the effect of aluminum under controlled conditions. Five groups of two rats each, all of the same litter, were placed on an experimental diet and fed for seventy-four days. Since ten days in the life of a rat equals a year of human life, the experiment may be said to have approximated a period of seven years.
Group I was fed 40 grams of tomato juice each day, cooked in a dark aluminum pan and containing 14 parts per million of aluminum, supplemented by a normal diet of Purina checkers. Group 2 was fed 20 grams of water containing 400 grams of aluminum nitrate, for ten days, and later the diet was supplemented by lettuce, which contains about 14 parts per million of aluminum, and a normal diet of Purina checkers.
Group 3, the control group, was fed only Purina checkers. Group 4 was fed baking-powder biscuits which were made as follows: flour, 55o grams ; sodium chloride, 8 grams ; sucrose, 5 grams, Calumet baking powder, 16 grams. A 20-gram portion of the resulting biscuit contained approximately 3.3 milligrams of aluminum oxide. The two rats in this group were given 40 grams of biscuit daily. The diet was supplemented by Purina checkers and cod-liver oil two or three times each week. Group 5 was given 50 grams of cereal cooked in a dark aluminum pan, a food containing about 8 parts per million of aluminum. The results of the experiment were determined by clinical observation, autopsy examinations, and growth curves.
It was found that the group of rats fed a strongly aluminized diet differed in no essentials from the rats fed a controlled diet which contained no aluminum. Not only were their internal organs normal in appearance, but they showed on analysis no significant uptake of aluminum and were of comparable weight.
The findings of this laboratory are therefore in complete harmony with the research of leading food chemists, who in more than two hundred separate papers reporting their findings, have indicated that there is no likelihood of producing either organic disease or food poisoning by the use of aluminum.
Our own research, together with the wealth of similar testimony from scores of the best biochemists in this country and in Europe, serves as the basis for the statement that those who condemn the use of aluminum, claiming new light on health reform, are neither scientific nor well informed. The principles of health reform are scientifically sound, verifiable, and worthy of confidence, but they leave no room for quackery, faddism, or the pseudo science of misguided enthusiasts.
As a matter of interest, the following summaries of three publications are here given, which indicate clearly that scientists do not accept the theory that aluminum salts have carcinogenic (cancer-producing) effects.
Aluminum and the Spread of Cancer, F. Blumenthal, Z. Krebsforsch. 30, 314-316 (1929). A discussion is given of certain articles which have appeared, relating to the occurrence of cancer due to the use of aluminum cooking utensils. Such articles are critically reviewed, and are found to contain no scientific evidence of the above relationship.
Moreover, after a consideration of the problem, the German Board of Health has made the statement that it can be said with certainty that aluminum is able neither to produce cancer nor to cause its spread.
On the Pretended Role of Aluminum in Cancer. (Apropos of an American Campaign against Aluminum) G. Ichok. Ann. hyg. publ. sociale 7, 113 (1929). In America there have been made accusations against aluminum, stating that it is injurious whether obtained from kitchen utensils, alum baking powders, water, or medical prescriptions. Various complaints have been ascribed to its alleged poisonous effects, including myocarditis (inflammation of the muscular part of the heart wall), apoplexy, and cancer. In this regard, investigations conducted in England under the auspices of the Medical Research Council showed that the cooking, even of acid fruits and vegetables for long periods of time in aluminum vessels, produced barely detectable amounts of aluminum in the juices. Even acids boiled in such vessels contained only traces of aluminum. Ichok concludes that up to the present neither the laboratory, the hospital, nor statistics have given any probable proof of the pathogenic role of aluminum in cancer. The discussion which followed the presentation of this paper at a meeting of the Society of Public, Industrial, and Social Hygiene (France) unanimously concurred with its contents.
The Role of Metals and More Particularly of Aluminum in the Pathogeny of Cancer, Marcel Marie-Amero. Bull. soc. sci. hyg. ailment. 18, 42 (1930) ; C. A. 24, 3270 (1930). In a critical examination of the literature no satisfactory evidence was found that aluminum produces cancer. It is recognized that soluble aluminum salts, in comparatively large doses, are toxic and may tend to produce gastric ulceration in the same way as do other nonspecific irritating substances, but this fact has no direct bearing on the subject of cancer. Furthermore, the occurrence of cancer in various parts of America and Europe cannot be correlated with the use of aluminum compounds, and no occupational maladies can be directly related to the aluminum industry. Aluminum taken with food prepared in aluminum cooking utensils is present in an insoluble and relatively nontoxic form (as aluminum oxide). Moreover it is present in amounts which have no significance as far as harmful effects are concerned.
