Aluminium in vaccines

[bumbleymummy]

I thought this might do better with its own thread because the other one went off on a bit of a tangent.

On other threads it has been said that Aluminium is 'safe' in vaccines and that 'the dose makes the poison' .I'd just like to ask a few questions and maybe the people who have made those comments on the other threads will be able to answer them.

What is the 'dose that makes the poison' for Aluminium?

How much Aluminium is absorbed by the body from a vaccine?

We know that Aluminium is toxic and I found this from medscape 'if a significant load exceeds the body's excretory capacity, the excess is deposited in various tissues, including bone, brain, liver, heart, spleen, and muscle. This accumulation causes morbidity and mortality through various mechanisms.' So what is the excretory capacity for a child?

I've tried to find the answers to those questions myself.

Wrt what the toxic dose for Aluminium is I found this on the FDA website :

"Research indicates that patients with impaired kidney function, including premature neonates, who receive parenteral levels of aluminum at greater than 4 to 5 [micro]g/kg/day accumulate aluminum at levels associated with central nervous system and bone toxicity. Tissue loading may occur at even lower rates of administration."

I'm still looking for something that shows what the toxic dose for a healthy infant is. Does anyone else have a link?

Wrt how much Al is absorbed from vaccines. I've found this from medscape :

"In healthy subjects, only 0.3% of orally administered aluminum is absorbed via the GI tract and the kidneys effectively eliminate aluminum from the human body. It is only when the GI barrier is bypassed, such as intravenous infusion or in the presence of advanced renal dysfunction, that aluminum has the potential to accumulate. As an example, with intravenously infused aluminum, 40% is retained in adults and up to 75% is retained in neonates.[4]"

Obviously vaccines aren't given intravenously but they still bypass the GI tract so what percentage is retained? Anyone know?

I've also checked how much Al is in a dose of Pediacel (5 in 1) www.medicines.org.uk/emcmobile/medicine/15257/spc#PRODUCTINFOhere :

"Adsorbed on Aluminium Phosphate

1.5 mg (0.33 mg Aluminium)"

Does that mean there is 0.33mg (equivalent to 330 micrograms) in each dose?

If anyone has answers to these questions, please post them. I'm sure some of you must because you have posted that Aluminium is safe in vaccines. Links to any info are very much appreciated. TIA :)

I have bruffin and I can't find a study that shows it which is why I've asked Jo where she has got her info from.

I'm glad that you have been reassured by what you've read but some of us have more questions that haven't been answered.

Have a nice holiday and I hope your DD's mouth feels better soon. New braces are sore :(

Here are a few quotes from bumble, that somehow lead me to believe that she thought that the ATSDR were making a comparison between injected Al and eaten Al, and that she thought this comparison was invalid.

(1.) ATSDR study gives the MRL for intermediate and chronic oral exposure. Vaccines are not given orally.
(2.) If you read the section about the MRLs they are on given for the oral intake. (towards the end of the paper)
(3.) See Appendix A for the MRLs from the ADSTR report. Note how they are for the oral route.
(4.) I was pointing out that the MRLs given in the report were based on the oral route.
(5.) I know that the ATSDR report MRL's were based on the oral route.
(6.) the MRLs from the ADSTR report which (again) are based on oral administration.
(7.) the MRLs that were based on oral administration as I said earlier (several times).
(8.) The 'regulatory MRLs' that it refers to come from the ADSTR report and are based on oral administration.
(9.) They are still basing it on the MRLs from the ATSDR report for oral administration.
(10.) they those parameters and then compare them to what they know to be the MRL for oral Al. We do not take vaccines orally.
(11.) Well Keith et al says that they compare it to the oral MRLs

After we finally made her understand there was nothing invalid about the comparison, she replied

(12.) the ATSDR report didn't compare oral administered Al and vaccines.

So that was really worth the effort.
Mad as a mad march hare who fell in the mad potion when she was young.

Jo, Why is this difficult for you to understand? The ATSDR MRLs are based on oral intake - MRLs were not derived for vaccines/intramuscular Al because not enough data were not available. (you can read that in the report) The ATSDR have not made any comparisons between injected Al and oral Al. other studies have made direct comparisons using the MRLs from the ATSDR report and comparing them to the amount of Al in vaccines. The amount of Al entering the blood via an injection is different to the amount that enters the body through the GI Tract.

I'm really not sure why you seem so confused. Based on your post I'm still not sure you actually understand what the MRLs are or how they are derived tbh. Did you read Appendix A in the ASTDR report?

You've suggested that it is actually the increased burden of Al from vaccines that the studies have compared to the increased burden from the MRL for oral Al but you haven't actually linked to any studies that show where they have measured that increased burden of Al. If you do have one then it may very well answer one of my initial questions - how much Al from a vaccine is absorbed by the body? So if you have it then do please link to it because I haven't been able to find one. Have you just assumed that is what is done?

Why would any of those quotes lead you to believe that I 'thought that the ATSDR were making a comparison between injected Al and eaten Al'
when they are all comments I made about other studies (ie the ones that people were linking to) referring back to the MRLs in the ATSDR report? What on earth are you thinking?

I forgot to bookmark this thread and it was almost impossible to work out where I'd last got to as it seems to keep going round in the same circles.

Bruffin, Jo, Piglet I applaud you for having the patience to continue pointing out the incredibly obvious over and over again. I think you do a valuable service not allowing the half-truths, rumours and scare stories about vaccines to stand unchallenged.

Bumbley - seriously, what is your angle? Why the endless threads about whether vaccines are safe? You've been starting these threads for years, I'm guessing this is a decision you made for your own DC a long time ago. As for all the other children that you love and care about, their parents will have made (hopefully) the right decision for them, I don't think anything you write or read on MN is going to make the slightest bit of difference to those decisions. So what is the point of it all? What are you hoping to achieve?

Do you suppose that the purpose of this thread is to create flannel and confusion about the safety of vaccines, without producing any evidence that there is a problem? In order to create doubt and suspicion is the reader's mind?

I am not saying that is the purpose, you understand, I'm just asking the question.

Is there any proof that it is not?

We need more research into this.

Well, I was hoping to find answers to the questions I asked in my OP. (surely that is fairly obvious?) I thought for a while there that Jo was finally going to be able to answer one of them by providing a link to a study measuring the increase in body burden from a vaccine but it seems that she didn't have one after all.

If it was so 'incredibly obvious', it would be fairly easy to find those studies and we wouldn't have to spend so much time going around in circles discussing ones that don't actually have the relevant information.

It's become pretty obvious that no one on this thread is able to answer the questions I asked. Maybe we'll be able to come back to it in the future when the further studies that have been recommended have been carried out. Until then, I guess they'll just have to remain unanswered...

I'm glad no-one has some reason to think that it is not safe.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/

Just see someone post this on another forum.

Don't understand your point Holdin.

Do you mean that you have reason to suppose it is not safe?

BTW it is instructive to observe that Infant Mortality Rates in developed nations with a well-established Health Service which is universal and free at point of use, have much better rates than countries which are either developing, or have no such health service.

For example, you will notice that the Western European nations are near the head of the table whereas the US is below Cuba, Slovakia and Lithuania, but above Belarus. The high spend on healthcare in the US is due to the private system which means very high costs to the prosperous, and to those fortunate enough to have generous insurance.

It would be foolish to suggest that the high infant mortality rate in the US is due to vaccination.

If its the article i am thinking of it doesn't compare like with like, because of the different ways each country classifies infant death, and it also includes children who didn't receive any vaccines ie died before they were old enough to recieve any at all.

Your OP does not ask for 'a study measuring the increase in body burden from a vaccine', it asks 'How much Aluminium is absorbed by the body from a vaccine?'

Your question has been answered by studies that measure the biokinetics of Al, and reports which use this understanding to calculate the increase in body burden of Al.

Your OP question has been answered. Rather than accept this, you've changed the question, and now demand a study which specifically measures Al from a vaccine. As far as I know nobody has bothered to do this, because they've got better things to do. Either the Al stays in the muscle, for which the long-term biokinetics are known, and where it is almost certainly benign (as Bruffin has explained to you) or it all goes into the blood for which the biokinetics are known in full.

In the remote possibility that Al in muscle is harmful this would justify research on Al in muscles, not a largely pointless exercise in measuring short-term Al biokinetics in muscle following a vaccination. Research on Al in muscle has and is being done, and it does not support the small french study you trawled up on google.

We know that even if all the Al in a vaccine goes into the blood, it is not enough to do any harm. And we know that if some of the Al stays in the muscle for a few months, it is almost certainly harmless. And so for this evening's question for you to not answer/ claim not to understand:

What could you possibly hope to learn from research into the short-term biokinetics of Al in muscle that would make you more confident in vaccines?

I didn't say that's what I asked for , I said that providing that study could actually answer my question. I actually made that quite clear just a few posts ago:

"you haven't actually linked to any studies that show where they have measured that increased burden of Al. If you do have one then it may very well answer one of my initial questions - how much Al from a vaccine is absorbed by the body?"

None of the studies linked to so far have done that. I'm not sure why you think it has been answered because I've pointed out each time why the links provided haven't given the relevant information.

That 'small French study' (I think it is a case report) was one of several that are investigating MMF.

"We know that even if all the Al in a vaccine goes into the blood, it is not enough to do any harm"

How do we know this? Because it is less than the amount that of Al that it is safe to swallow? Apparently that is what you are basing that assumption on.

"What could you possibly hope to learn from research into the short-term biokinetics of Al in muscle that would make you more confident in vaccines?"

The pharmacokinetics of Al are necessary to establish safety. Why wouldn't you want that information? I'm not sure why you're saying 'short term' either.

"How do we know this? Because it is less than the amount that of Al that it is safe to swallow?"

I wonder why the concept of "body burden" has been discarded?

"you haven't actually linked to any studies that show where they have measured that increased burden of Al." - What's this one from up-thread do then?

'For example, twenty injections, each containing 0.5 mg of aluminium, could release 10 mg of aluminium into the body (it might take 4000 days to reach the same level of intake from normal dietary intakes) of which 0.2 mg would be retained as a persistent body burden? making vaccines an important source of body aluminium; this is particularly true for children. For example, body burden calculations were made assuming hepatitis B vaccinations (each containing 0.25 mg Al) at birth, 2 months, and 6 months and diphtheria plus tetanus toxiods (each containing about 0.5 mg Al) at 2 months, 4 months, 6 months and 12 months by Keith et al.187 These suggest that at age one year the body burden of aluminium (y0.2 mg) will exceed that resulting from the ingestion of breast milk (y0.1 mg), but is less than that calculated assuming aluminium intakes at the ATSDR minimal risk level for oral intake (2 mg Al per day) y2 mg.'

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.119.9558&rep=rep1&type=pdf

"How do we know this? Because it is less than the amount that of Al that it is safe to swallow?"

No because it's less than the increase in body burden that would result in eating the MRL. You've been told this several times. See above for an example.

"I'm not sure why you're saying 'short term' either."

Because, as I told you, we already have the long-term. You haven't answered the question. What could you expect to learn from a study of short-term Al biokinetics in muscle, that would increase your confidence in vaccines?

"I wonder why the concept of "body burden" has been discarded?"

Too much Aluminium leads to memory loss.

I've been away.
Bumbley I'm after a bit of a recap; have any of the questions from the original post yet been answered? I'm thinking not but might have missed something.
Off now to try to read all of the links.................. Back in a week, I reckon.

Thank you for the link Jo.

Firstly, I'm not sure where this figure of 0.2 mg of the 10mg (2%) from the vaccines being retained as a persistent body burden has come from. Earlier in the article it mentions that the retention in the human study was 4% after 3 years so I can't see where 2% has come from for a calculation based on 1 year.

The article points out that studies for the retention of Aluminium in humans is limited.

" To date, only one study has been undertaken to determine the long-term biokinetics of aluminium in the human body. This study was a single volunteer study using 26Al and was initiated at the Harwell Laboratory in 1991. In addition, a multi-volunteer study was initiated using a further six adult male subjects to examine inter-subject variability in the short- term retention of aluminium."

It was from this study that the equation used by Keith et al to determine body burden from vaccines was based. So a single volunteer study of an adult male has been used to determine the body burden for an infant. You didn't seem too impressed by the single person study into MMF that I posted earlier. Do you find it acceptable that only a single adult male volunteer has been used in this instance?

This is also from the article wrt to the intersubject variability of the 6 adult males in the short term study:

"... intersubject variability was significant with a range of residual body burdens at 5 days post-injection ranging from about 16 to 37% of the injected activity. Most of this variability resulted from differences in the levels of aluminium excreted during the first day of the experiments (Fig. 12). This suggests early inter-subject differences in excretory clearance rate, such as those that might arise from variability in the kinetics of aluminium speciation within the blood following injection"

So among the six adults in the short term study(which I believe was 2 weeks) there was significant variability. Who knows how much the uptake of the single adult male in the one long term study would vary from other adults let alone from that of an infant.

A few other points worth noting:

The MRL quoted in the article is 2mg/kg/day. This is an old figure. The latest MRL from the ATSDR report (2008) is 1 mg/kg/day for oral intake. {{http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxguides/toxguide-22.pdf Here]]

I also think it is worth noting that the PTWI from the WHO (2006) is 1 mg/kg/week for oral intake. Here

Do you not think that if there were enough studies and data to determine the safe level of Aluminium that can be injected that the ATSDR would have been able to determine a MRL for it specifically?

I reread the section about Aluminium in Dr Halvorsen's book. He uses the MRLs in a different way - without basing calculations on the results of a single person study.

The MRL for oral Al is given as 1mg/kg/day. 0.1-1% of oral Al is absorbed into the bloodstream. In comparison, we know that nearly 100% of Al from the vaccine ends up in the blood. If we take the upper figure, this means that 100 times more Al from vaccines ends up in the blood compared to that taken in orally. If this is the case, then the MRL for oral AL would be 100 times more than that for injected Al which would equate to 0.01mg/kg/day. The average 2 month old weighs approximately 5 kgs. This means that a 'safe' level to be injected would be 0.05mg. A single dose of the Pediacel vaccine contains 0.33mg Aluminium.

Remember that we used the upper figure of absorbed Oral Al. If we use the lower figure of 0.1% then the 'safe' injectable level would be 0.005mg. Also keep in mind that the WHO gave its PTWI figure as 1mg/kg/week.

I'm not saying that those figures are exact, or that the method can provide an accurate idea of what a 'safe' level is for Al in vaccines but I'm certainly not convinced that an equation based on a single study of one adult male can allow an accurate calculation to determine the body burden of a vaccine in an infant.

I'm pleased that the second time I gave you the link, you have read it and accept it does answer your question, and that you also finally accept that comparisons with oral MRL's are comparisons with the increase in body burden.

I'm disappointed you show not an once of contrition for your goading tone in claiming on multiple occasions that I hadn't given you such a link, or for claiming on multiple occasions that I didn't understand MRL's, when you now understand that it is you who had misunderstood the methodology.

I have no idea how much long-term Al biokinetics varies among individuals, and thus how representative the study is. If you're concerned, why don't you use variability measured in the short-term studies to calculate if this is an issue.

I have no recollection of commenting on a 1 person MMF.

Your quote from Halvorsen does little other than to demonstrate that he is either a moron, or a profiteering cynic. He doesn't even mention that oral MRL's are for chronic exposure.

Jo, it does not answer my question about how much Al is absorbed from a vaccine. It gives 2% as a retention figure to calculate body burden in the first year despite a 4% figure being given for 3 year retention in the only long term study which was based on a single male adult. Which figure do you think I should use to calculate how much is retained in an infant?

I wonder why you didn't just link to the study you were talking about when I first asked you for it if you don't like repeatedly being asked for something. I think it was a fair assumption to make that you didn't have it when you wouldn't provide a link. I will admit that when I first read it, I did overlook that the actual body burden was given because it gave the MRL of 2mg/kg/day as well.

Looking at the variability among the adults won't unfortunately, tell us too much about what the variability is between an adult and an infant or, more importantly, the variability between the individual from the study and an infant.

The MMF study was also the "French study' if that jogs your memory for you.

I don't see an ounce of contrition from you despite all your 'studies on the safety of Al' boiling down to one longterm study on a single adult male volunteer. Perhaps you would like to admit that these safety studies aren't quite as thorough or as reliable as you assumed they would be? You admit that you don't know how representative the study is yet you were happy to use it as 'proof' that the studies had been done and that Al in vaccines was 'safe'.

I'm not sure why you think Halvorsen is a 'moron'. Did your article and the studies it used to calculate body burden mention that the MRLs were based on chronic (and intermediate) exposure?

were for* chronic and intermediate exposure.

Why don't you do a sensitivity analysis to quantify your concerns about the parameterisation of the safe dose model?

Why hasn't anyone else?

What's the safe limit for iv fluids?