LEACHING OF ALUMINUM FROM COOKWARES - A REVIEW

Concern over the possible relation between environmental aluminium exp osure and Alzheimer's disease has prompted studies of all forms of hum an intake of this element including that from foods. Aluminium cookwar e, apart from other sources of dietary aluminium, is considered to be a potential source of this metal to human beings. Various research gro ups have carried out aluminium leaching experiments with food, beverag es and water under different experimental conditions modified by varyi ng the level of pH, chloride, fluoride, citrate, acetate etc. The resu lts reported by different workers show marked discrepancies in levels of leached aluminum. The apparent reason for such discrepancy in level s of aluminum leached can be attributed to factors such as non-systema tic and non-uniform experimental designs, non-standard conditions main tained during the experiments and choice of method for aluminium analy sis. In order to assess accurately the contribution of aluminium inges tion by human beings through aluminium cookware, the present review em phasises the need of i) standard size aluminium plates obtained from t he same lot for one set of experimentations; ii) real life cooking con ditions to highlight the role of various complexing species present in food e.g. citrate, oxalate, acetate, tartrate etc.; iii) role of chem istry of aluminium in presence of acidic, basic and neutral cooking me dium and iv) strict analytical control in the estimation of aluminium. Results of a systematic study by the authors conducted on the aboveme ntioned lines are also described.