Aluminium in foodstuff and the influence of aluminium foil used for food preparation or short time storage

Aluminium is an omnipresent part of everyday life. It is widely used in industry and furthermore in products like cosmetics, sun creams or it can be applied for instance as aluminium foil by consumers during food preparation in households. However, over the last decades the toxicity of aluminium for humans has been heavily discussed and is still not completely clarified. Therefore, food aluminium concentrations were investigated in different untreated foodstuff as well as a possible aluminium transfer from aluminium foil to food. The results show that untreated food is not significantly contaminated. Furthermore, short time contact to aluminium foil increases the food aluminium concentration only marginally. Nevertheless, as soon as the food is in contact to aluminium foil and at the same time in contact with metals (alloys) with a higher standard electrode potential than aluminium (-1.66V) high aluminium contaminations were observed.