It is widely agreed that breast milk is the best choice for a newborn, developing baby. However due to numerous reasons parents use infant formula as a supplement, or completely, as nourishment for up to 50% of their babies. You would expect that the formula will never be a complete replacement for natural mother’s milk however would you expect it to be contaminated with aluminum?

Unfortunately aluminum contamination is all too common. This study looked at 30 of the most popular brands of formula. They evaluated pre made, ready to drink liquid formulas and dry powder mixes and found all of them to be contaminated with aluminum. The amount of aluminum in the formulas was higher than the recommended amount for drinking water and in 14 of the samples it exceeded the maximum allowable level for drinking water. It is important to note that these levels for drinking water were determined from studies on adults. No studies looking at aluminum exposure have been done on children or babies.

While there is some debate as to the toxicity and importance of aluminum exposure and the results of it ending up in our bodies there are no studies showing it is necessary or beneficial. No matter what studies show there is no reason for it to be in baby’s formulas and potentially affecting their growing and developing brains and bodies. Especially given the fact that studies on adults have shown there are higher concentrations of aluminum in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.

One thing this study was not able to show was where the aluminum contamination came from. They cite several possible sources. One is the packaging. Most of the products have aluminum as part of the packaging in some form. The insides of cardboard cans and boxes are lined with aluminum; products in plastic containers will usually have at least aluminum in the cap sealing the product. This alone does not explain the aluminum contamination however as products with very little aluminum in the packaging were still found to have high concentrations of aluminum in the product. The manufacturing process is likely the culprit however none of the companies contacted when doing this study claimed any aluminum was added to the product nor would they discuss where the aluminum in the product is coming from. What is known is the products made from soy have the highest concentrations of aluminum regardless of packaging type.

The most disappointing part of this study is that none of this is new news. Three years ago, in 2010, these authors published a paper that showed there was too much aluminum in infant formulas. This paper was a follow up to that study. The authors expected the content of aluminum to go down after the findings of their last study but that was not the case. As always natural breast milk is best and if formula must be used avoid soy based formula as it is the most contaminated with aluminum regardless of packaging type.  

Dr Scott Szela

BMC Pediatrics 2013, 13:162