Demystifying Vaccine Ingredients - Aluminum

People, in general, tend to have a fairly poor grasp of chemistry. I don't blame them; there's an awful lot to learn and it can get pretty complex. To make matters worse, this lack of understanding is often coupled with what some would call "chemophobia" (not a very good name, as it's not a real phobia, nor does it generally rise to the level of debilitating pathology). In short, people tend to have an inherent, emotional distrust of "chemicals" and substances that have weird, hard to pronounce names or that tend to have negative associations. For example, who wants to ingest 7,8-Dimethyl-10-[(2S,3S,4R)-2,3,4,5-tetrahydroxypentyl]benzo[g]pteridine-2,4-dione? Maybe you'd prefer C₁₇H₂₀N₄O₆? But that chemical is in a lot of foods that we eat. Many processed foods, like cereals, pastas and cheeses contain it. Don't eat processed foods and eat nothing but an all-natural, organic, "healthy" diet? You still won't avoid that chemical, since it's also in a lot of leafy greens and legumes. Both of those are the same chemical, also known as riboflavin, or vitamin B2. What about potassium? It's a metal that, when exposed to water, reacts very violently, exploding almost immediately. If you are exposed to excessive amounts of potassium, you can develop muscle paralysis and heart palpitations. And yet, it is an essential part of our diet. Your body needs potassium in order to function properly.

When it comes to medical products, there is an even greater uncertainty around the ingredients. Not only do the problems above come into play, but add on distrust of faceless companies or unsavory associations, and the fear increases. I illustrated this in two of my previous posts, one on formaldehyde and one on monosodium glutamate. Some vaccines contain small amounts of these substances as a part of the manufacturing process. But there is a vaccine ingredient that gets even more bad press than either of those: aluminum (or aluminium, if you prefer). Let's take a look at this substance, how we're exposed, how our bodies deal with it, and its role in vaccines.

Demystifying Vaccine Ingredients - MSG

Telling people what a product contains can be a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it introduces transparency and empowers people to learn more about the products they use or plan to use. On the other, most people have absolutely no clue what those ingredients do or why they're used. This often leads to gross misunderstanding and misplaced fear. We see this frequently with packaged foods. Any ingredient that is hard to pronounce or sounds all chemically is viewed askance. This is compounded when it comes to medicinal drugs, which use the isolated, purified substance that performs a very specific function; the unpurified origins frequently contain hundreds or thousands of other chemicals that may lead to unwanted effects (e.g., compare asiprin to raw willow bark or digoxin to whole foxglove).

Vaccines are a very prominent example of this fear of chemicals (and just to get this out of the way, everything in the world is some chemical or combination of chemicals). Earlier this year, I wrote about one vaccine ingredient, formaldehyde, in an effort to clear up why and how it is used in vaccines, as well as showing that the amounts found in vaccines are safe. Just the Vax and Science-Based Medicine also have good write-ups on the preservative. Recently, someone asked me about another ingredient: monosodium glutamate (MSG).

Demystifying Vaccine Ingredients - Formaldehyde

There seems to be a lot of fear and confusion surrounding many of the ingredients (PDF) that are listed as being in vaccines. Many of them have long, scary or hard to pronounce chemical names, like polyethylene glycol. Others just sound a little disturbing, like chick embryo fibroblasts. Then you have more familiar chemical names that have some manner of negative connotation associated with them, such as formaldehyde.

Generally, in discussions about such ingredients, those who are in some manner opposed to vaccines will say something about "the toxins!" What they actually mean is generally unclear. Just as unclear, at times, is what the supposed toxin is supposed to do; how is it supposed to hurt people? They may not be certain what it does or why it is bad, but they know it is bad and that's that. I thought I might turn my hand, then, toward trying to understand, from a lay perspective, what these ingredients are, how they are used and whether they really are, as claimed, "toxic". Let's start with formaldehyde.