aluminum pots and health

Most of the retailers and manufacturers recommend upgrading to titanium pots, as well as replacing your old water bottles and bladders with the new BPA-free ones.

You can send me any pots you don't want ;)

Here's an old FDA article: http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/CONSUMER/CON00036.html

Summary: using an aluminum pot while hiking won't hurt you. Most ingested aluminum goes right through you, and the link to Alzheimer's has been largely discredited. Even if you use aluminum cookware for everything you do, your intake would be about 3.5 mg per day (a bit more for acidic foods). Compare to 10-20 mg in a buffered aspirin, or 50 mg in an antacid. Short term – worry about giardia in your water. Long term – worry about lead.

"Most of the retailers and manufacturers recommend upgrading to titanium pots"

Uh….ok. And where did you hear that little gem of an idea? The Titanium Retailers Group? :-P :-0

Seriously, aluminum is not the devil! Hard Anodized Aluminum is the way to go if one wants a light weight pot and not clearing out your pockets either.

Btw, as for bladders? They NEVER had BPA in them!

> Most of the retailers and manufacturers recommend upgrading to titanium pots, as well as replacing your old water bottles and bladders with the new BPA-free ones.

What they are really saying is 'give us your money'.

Aluminium is not harmful – that was and old urban myth.

Cheers

"Aluminium is not harmful"

Are you kidding? I'm surprised that I survived the days of using a Wal-Mart grease pot or Foster's can. I feel so much healthier now that I've moved up to a Titan Kettle.

If you use anti-perspirant, this is a moot point.

I was reading about myths of different kinds a few months back. It included the aluminum and Alzheimer's myth.

Some initial brain slice studies showed a concentration of aluminum in the brain tissue samples.

Later research failed to confirm this, and it was shown that if your rinse water was aluminum contaminated, the aluminum in the rinse water would migrate into the tissue sample.

I have forgotten the source of aluminum contamination. Maybe someone has been rinsing my brain with aluminum.

This story of aluminum and alzheimer's will never die. It is too simple and comforting to have a "prevention" that you can do right now. Just throw out your aluminum pots and pans, and you will be "safe".

Right.

It is hard to know if anything is 100% safe. However, aluminum has been tested way more than titanium, and they haven't found anything wrong with it (as mentioned in an early post, early results from a study were later discredited). There are some reports (not to sound alarmist) that suggest some health dangers from Teflon.

Then there's dihydrogen oxide. For some reason this chemical has escaped all FDA and EPA regulation, and yet it has been found in all our foodstuffs and in every human tested. It has been found in fetuses too. It is known that an excess of it can kill.
Really scary stuff!

Cheers

Hmmm, dihydrogen oxide, you say. Sounds scary, Roger, do you think you are full of it? I think that dihydrogen monoxide is probably more of a threat, though ;-p.

LIBERTAS+PAX PACIS

Dear all,

Thank you all for the input. I appreciate it.
Take care.

Darwin