Infant Formulas: Crisis What Crisis?

The contamination of infant formulas by aluminium is the real crisis

While the politics of infant formula continues to make the headlines in the US I thought it would be remiss of me if I didn’t remind everyone about the true scandal associated with these products.

In 2015 at AutismOne I gave a presentation demonstrating why infants are ideal models of intoxication by aluminium. Clicking on the link will take you to my slides but not my video. The latter having been taken down by YouTube recently. I will upload the video to our website as soon as possible so keep checking there.

Ideal models because infants, many from birth, receive all their early nutrition from infant formulas that are heavily contaminated by aluminium. These products, either ready to use or prepared from powders, often contain concentrations of aluminium that are significantly above European Regulations governing the aluminium content of potable water. A typical daily exposure of up to 0.7mg of aluminium, equivalent to drinking 14L of tap water.

In our publications on this subject we made a point of listing the brands we measured in order that parents would have specific information upon which to make a choice, something akin to Sophie’s Choice. When we measured the aluminium content of prescription infant formulas we found that many of these represented the most heavily contaminated products available, specifically formulas designed for infants with allergies and intolerances. However, we also showed that some prescription infant formulas contained very little aluminium. These formulas were available in the same packaging as other formulas and so it could be surmised that when high quality, high purity ingredients were chosen to prepare the formulas it was possible to produce a product that was not heavily contaminated with aluminium.

This tells us everything that we need to know about greed coming before safety. Because there are no regulations governing the aluminium content of infant formulas there are no incentives to use high quality products in their preparation. The latter is true for all readily available infant formulas and most prescription formulas. Profit comes before the health and safety of the infant. What I find extremely troubling is that we are exporting these ‘poisons’ to the developing world in the guise of doing good. I fear that the hundreds of tonnes of infant formula that end up in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world will not have been prepared with high quality, low aluminium, ingredients. I am confident that quite the opposite is true. The developed world is not content with poisoning its own children, it wants to share the poison across the globe. Where have we seen something similar occurring, childhood vaccinations? Therein lies the second reason why infants are ideal models of intoxication by aluminium.