Yes, some vaccines contain aluminum. This is a good thing.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has often based his criticism of vaccines on a common ingredient: aluminum, which he believes is responsible for a litany of childhood ailments, including food allergies, autism AND depression.

“You wonder why a whole generation of kids are allergic to things,” Kennedy said during: Interview from 2021. “This is because we trigger allergies by pumping it full of aluminum.”

For many vaccine scientists, aluminum is an odd target. It is one of the most studied ingredients in vaccines and perhaps current medicine.

“We have collected a tremendous amount of information,” said Dr. Andrew Racine, a pediatrician and chief medical officer at Montefiore Health System. “If something came up about insecurity, we probably saw it somewhere, but we just don’t see it.”

Aluminum salts, a more soluble form of the metal, are added to vaccines such as Tdap shot to boost the body’s immune response. The ingredient has been repeatedly evaluated as a vaccine ingredient in clinical trials and administered in billions of doses for several decades.

Still, as Kennedy prepares for confirmation hearings as secretary of Health and Human Services, many experts fear that work readiness will come under renewed scrutiny and could even be used to justify limiting access to several childhood vaccines, such as hepatitis vaccines hepatitis B and pneumococcal disease.

Aaron Siri, a lawyer and close associate of Mr. Kennedy, represented clients in Petitioning federal regulators suspend the distribution of several vaccines until manufacturers provide additional information on the aluminum content in the preparations.

Kennedy and Siri did not respond to requests for comment.

The origins of the addition of aluminum in vaccines date back almost a hundred years. In a stable on the outskirts of Paris, a teenage veterinarian made a strange discovery: adding tapioca to his horses’ diphtheria vaccines increased their effectiveness.

Doctor Gaston Ramon noticed that horses that developed a minor infection at the injection site had much stronger immunity to diphtheria. He theorized that adding something to his shots caused the inflammation – ingredients that he later called adjuvantsderived from the Latin root “to facilitate” — helped trigger a stronger immune response.

After testing several candidates – including breadcrumbs, petroleum jelly and rubber latex – he was able to employ a tapioca-infused injection that produced little swelling and significantly more antibodies.

Tapioca has never caught on as an adjuvant. However, in 1932, a few years after Dr. Ramon’s research was published, the United States began including aluminum salts in its products. vaccination against diphtheriajust like them it turned out that it can be recalled similar but more reliable effect.

Currently, aluminum adjuvants are found in: 27 routine vaccinesand almost half recommended for children under 5 years of age.

This additional immune boost is not needed for all types of vaccines. Injections containing a weakened form of the virus, such as the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, or produced using mRNA technology, such as the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, generate a sufficiently mighty immune response on their own.

However, in vaccines containing only petite fragments of the pathogen that would attract little attention from the immune system, adjuvants facilitate stimulate a stronger response, enabling vaccines to be administered in smaller doses.

Scientists believe that aluminum salts work in two ways. First, aluminum binds to the vaccine’s main ingredient and causes it to enter the bloodstream more slowly, giving immune cells more time to build a response.

Aluminum is also believed to act more directly, enhancing the activity of certain immune cells, although the mechanism is different not entirely understandable.

Although there are aluminum salts not the only adjuvants in the market, vaccine manufacturers often favor them because of their long history of collecting safety data.

Whenever a up-to-date vaccine using an aluminum adjuvant is developed, it undergoes lengthy clinical trials to assess its safety, and side effects are continuously monitored after approval. One of the earliest trials involving an aluminum adjuvant was published in 1934.

Later studies showed some minor side effects, such as redness, body aches and, in scarce cases, painful lumps at the injection site. But there is little credible evidence that aluminum in vaccines causes solemn, long-term side effects, as Kennedy suggested.

People routinely exposed to vast amounts of aluminum – such as workers who inhale aluminum dust or dialysis patients who routinely receive aluminum-rich medications – may develop respiratory, skeletal, and neurological complications.

The amount of aluminum in childhood vaccines, however, is petite compared to what people are routinely exposed to through the environment and food, said Dr. Tony Moody, director of the Duke CIVIC Vaccine Center.

“We are constantly exposed to aluminum,” he said. “If you inhale dust from outside, you are exposed to aluminum.”

During the first six months of a baby’s life, vaccines expose them to approx 4.4 milligrams made of aluminum. However, one slice of American cheese may contain as much as 50 milligrams made of aluminum.

When researchers compared aluminum levels in the blood and hair of children who received aluminum-containing vaccines with children who did not receive these vaccines, they found that no significant difference.

Some scientists believe one potential side effect requires additional research.

In 2022 after approx federally funded study found little association between exposure to aluminum from vaccines and asthma, the CDC noted that the association justified “further investigation” (The agency said it would not change vaccine recommendations “based on one study.”)

Mr. Kennedy, who was then president of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit organization often critical of vaccines, presented the study as evidence that vaccinations have caused an “asthma epidemic.”

The paper’s authors, however, were careful to point out the limitations of their findings, particularly that the effect was petite and the study was observational, meaning it could not demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship.

In the article, they cautioned that their results “do not constitute mighty evidence to question the safety of aluminum in vaccines.”

Independent experts too excellent that the authors did not collect data on several key risk factors, such as whether participants were exposed to cigarette smoke or whether there was a family history of asthma – which could explain the observed difference.

In response to the study, a group of researchers from Denmark’s public health agency Statens Serum Institut conducted a similar analysis on a national dataset of more than 450,000 children.

Their preliminary results showed no link between aluminum adjuvants and asthma said the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in 2023

However, a CDC spokeswoman said the agency was “discussing additional studies” to examine the potential risks.

But until tough research confirms this finding, the link between aluminum and asthma is tenuous at best, said Dr. Stanley Plotkin, who played a key role in developing the rubella vaccine.

“You cannot change the conclusions of any single article,” he said. “You have to look at all the literature.”

Anders Hviid, who led the Danish study, welcomed more research into the safety of adjuvants, but added that the research may never be enough to convince skeptics that aluminum does not cause long-term side effects.

“You can’t prove a negative,” he said. “There will always be a goalpost moving and saying, ‘Well, you haven’t looked at this and you haven’t looked at that that way.’”