Re: Re: Alum & Aluminum

[Guest guest]

Jocelyne-

>I use a deodorant stone, which usually lasts about 5 years. I think any

>aluminum problem would be negligible.

Not necessarily, if the alum (and/or its component aluminum) is

accumulating in your body. It could be very serious indeed.

>Unfortunately, most of the information on deodorant stones is provided by the

>people who sell them. That usually raises an red flag for me.

Exactly.

>There is no Aluminium in Alum, but its chemical formula is

>Aluminium Sulphate.

Meaning there's aluminum in alum, and this author is either lying or ignorant.

>The critical fact is that only certain types

>of aluminium compounds are harmful to humans. For example, if one were to

>swallow a pellet of pure solid aluminium, it would pass through the digestive

>tract and emerge from the body unchanged. In that situation, no absorption of

>aluminium would occur, and no harm to the individual would result.

This strikes me as extraordinarily unlikely, because aluminum cookware is

toxic, and not just when cooking with acidic foods. (Not to mention that

the stomach is very acidic, though I don't know what the solubility product

of aluminum in HCl would be -- I'd have to look it up.) Also, aluminum

constantly rubs off aluminum cookware, since it's a very soft metal, so

it's not like the lump would be physically unchanged by its passage through

the digestive tract.

I invite the author to swallow a daily pellet of pure aluminum and see how

well he fares over time.

>On the other hand, potassium alum (KAlSO4) is a compound which is very

>insoluble compound and stable. When used on the surface of the skin, no

>significant absorption occurs. If any minimal amount of alum is absorbed, it

>would not ionise, but would be secreted from the body in an unchanged state.

>Therefore, alum appears to be one of the aluminium compounds which is not

>harmful to humans.

The author is confusing solubility with initial absorption through the

skin. Something doesn't necessarily have to be soluble to be absorbed

through the skin; it can merely be present in small enough particles, which

indeed it would presumably have to be in order to spread around evenly

enough to function as a deodorant. I'd also be very leery of assuming that

any given substance is sure to be inert and completely harmless in the body

just because it has low solubility products in the lab with a handful of

individual compounds. The body is a very complex system, and many

seemingly inert chemicals have turned out to be harmful in the body.

>So AlSO4 is not Aluminium (Al), nor Sulphur (S) and not Oxygen (O). It is

>Alum - no more and no less. Alum kills bacteria and is not absorbed into the

>skin.

The fact that it kills bacteria is proof enough that it's bioactive, and as

I said, the conclusion that it's not absorbed by the skin simply does not

follow from the assertion that it's not soluble in bodily fluids, and that

assertion itself does not follow from a couple solubility products looked

up in a laboratory reference.

Given that this article and all others that I've seen supporting the use of

these stones are riddled with errors, I see no reason to be confident

enough in the safety of topical alum to actually use it. I'm not saying

it's definitely harmful, just that I certainly wouldn't take the risk, and

I advise everyone else to refrain too.

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