New Safety Concerns Raised About the Quantities of Aluminum in Childhood Vaccines

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By Physicians for Informed Consent

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), have raised concerns about the negative effects of aluminum exposure in humans. Because some vaccines contain aluminum, the FDA published a paper in 2011 (Mitkus et al.) to address concerns about aluminum exposure from vaccines in infants. The paper compared the aluminum exposure from vaccines in infants to a safety limit of oral aluminum determined by the ATSDR. However, this study incorrectly based its calculations on 0.78% of oral aluminum being absorbed into the bloodstream rather than the value of 0.1% used by the ATSDR in its computations. As a result, the FDA paper assumed that nearly 8 (0.78%/0.1%) times more aluminum can safely enter the bloodstream, and this led the authors to incorrectly conclude that aluminum exposure from vaccines was well below the safety limit.

Physicians for Informed Consent