Original subtitles

Annie, are you sure you don't want to put me in jail?

A year ago, 32 -year -old Eva Glaver from Frankfurt noticed a strange lump in

her breast.

Her suspicions were soon confirmed.

It was a malignant tumour.

And I never have to do it again.

How do you feel about the infusion today?

Actually quite good so far. Yes? Yes. I went to the gynecologist this week for

the ultrasound of the breast.

Okay. And that's okay.

There are still these seemingly good changes.

What did you say? You have cystic changes in the right breast? Yes.

In the right side.

Now it would be very important, and the tumor was on the left, and where

exactly? Yes, on the top.

On the top, okay.

It would be very important that you pay attention to which deodorants you use.

So I would pay attention to which additional substances are in there, and

is important is that there is no aluminum in it.

Aluminum. Yes, right.

Throw it away immediately and get a new one, because you already had a tumor,

and then you also have these cystic changes in the other breast.

Aluminium. Aluminium.

Even just a hundred years ago, only a few people would have even recognized

word. Nowadays, The light metal aluminium has almost overtaken iron.

In packaging and on facades of buildings, it already has.

In other words, we're living in the age of aluminium.

And Werner Jager is one of its prophets.

He's the director of research and development for aluminium construction

at Europe's biggest aluminium company, Norsk Hydro.

Aluminium as such is a very charming and a very exciting material.

Because with this kind of property, you have really all opportunities in hand.

You can really make from the very beginning of an idea till the very end.

call it cradle to cradle.

Everything possible with one material. The bandwidth, the application width of

aluminium is fascinating.

And this is why it makes me an aluminium man.

Attention and fire!

Aluminium is far more than just another working material and is used in a wide

range of products, toothpaste for example.

Aluminium is about a third the weight of iron and almost as strong and stable.

Aluminium can be put into any shape, does not rust and is an excellent

of heat and electricity.

Perfect properties for the metal of the modern age.

Aluminium is a first -class packaging material, whether for drinks or for

Aluminium has no taste and is light -proof, a highly decorative little piece

luxury to brighten up our day.

The toxicologist Christopher Exley on his way to work.

He's the head of the Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry at the University

Keele in England.

For almost 30 years, he's been working on one subject in particular, aluminium.

I live about 12 kilometres from the university, and so I have been cycling

from my home to Keele for 19 years now.

It's been...

A long journey, almost equivalent to, well, more than twice around the Earth

cycling to Kiel so that I can come here and do my research on aluminium.

In the early 1980s, it was the major environmental theme, acid rain.

Christopher Axley did research into its effect on fish.

Acid rain is the reason why I got into the subject of aluminium and aluminium

toxicity.

In the early 80s, we knew that acid rain was responsible for killing fish,

killing trees in forests, and we suspected that aluminium was the

of the toxicity that we were seeing. So I began to investigate the toxicity of

aluminium in salmon.

Water is normally aluminium -free.

Christopher Eckley found out that acid in rainwater releases amounts of

aluminium from the earth.

Tiny amounts, but enough to kill fish.

It became clear that the aluminium ions attack the fish's gills and prevent them

from functioning properly.

The fish suffocate.

When you see how aluminium impacts upon a small salmon,

it's actually quite a devastating thing.

You see the suffering.

I stopped working on fish, and indeed on animals, several years later, simply

because it upset me, actually. It didn't surprise me, it upset me.

it was these sorts of observations which made me think about working on

aluminium per se not simply aluminium in this but understanding how aluminium

impacts upon all living things and of course primarily humans

ava

glava is working as a midwife again and is making a home visit

How was your night?

Oh, it's okay.

How often does she call you, roughly?

There are phases when she is quite restless.

I lived seven years in a

row on call readiness.

I worked at least ten hours a day.

Often sometimes 20 per piece. They are often tied at night, the next morning or

so, as long as it takes to continue visiting the house.

Accordingly, I would say I sweated a lot and always had a deodorant in every

handbag.

There were about 11 pieces, because I have one in my sports bag, one in my

midwife bag, one in my handbag, at home, with my boyfriend and then another

because you like the variety and in the car in case of emergency.

The oncologist Philippa Darbra conducts research into causes of breast cancer.

She investigated why such an unusual proportion of tumours develop in the

around the armpits.

Studies done in the 1930s and 40s showed that there was 30 % of breast cancers

in this region. Now we have nearly 60 % in this region.

So something's going on beyond the ordinary explanation of there being more

tissue in that region.

And, of course, another possible explanation is that this is the region

chemicals are being applied under the breast.

Dabra's first hunch was that it had to do with the so -called parabens

in many cosmetic products.

Then I realised that within those cosmetics was aluminium used as an

antiperspirant and that that was added at quite high levels.

and so the exposure was an issue, and I wanted to know whether aluminium could

get into the human breast.

Then she began a study comparing women with and without breast cancer.

You can draw from non -pregnant women a very small amount of fluid from the

nipple with a breast pump.

This is called a nipple aspirate fluid.

And if you take those samples from women with breast cancer and women without

breast cancer, you can measure the content of things in those two samples.

we found higher levels of aluminium in the nipple aspirate fluids from women

with breast cancer.

The International Aluminium Institute is located on the Haymarket in London's

West End.

It lobbies on behalf of the aluminium industry.

Here we meet the toxicologist Nicholas Priest, who's been commissioned by the

industry to investigate the safety of aluminium.

If there's good evidence of toxicity, then I'd be the first person to turn

around and say, don't use it.

OK? But I can't find any.

There isn't.

any systematic evidence to show toxicity at sorts

of levels which people are exposed to.

And people don't put huge quantities of aluminium under their armpits.

You know, it's quite small. Most of it flakes off. Most of it comes on the

clothes. The amount which actually gets absorbed into the body is a fraction of

1%.

Philippa Dabra investigated the influence of such minimal quantities of

aluminium on breath cells.

Over a period of a year, she monitored alterations in living cells in the

presence of aluminium.

Indeed, when we take normal breast epithelial cells, they will form

suspension culture and they can form what you might call little tumours in

suspension in the presence of aluminium.

But in the absence of aluminium, of course, they don't do it because they're

normal cells.

So in that sense, the aluminium seems able to convert a normal cell into a

cancer cell.

And Dabra found something else.

The addition of aluminium also raised the probability that cancer cells would

move and form metastases.

One thing we also find that aluminium may be able to influence the way the

breast cancer cells behave and maybe the way that they can move.

proven and substantiated by other laboratories is a very serious issue

obviously nobody dies of a lump in the breast.

They die because the cells can move to other sites around the body.

It was clear to me that it was a big poison and that I was really doing

something with my body. But I always tried to say to him, okay, come on,

doing it now, you can do it.

Which was also really shit, but first the suspicion of metastasis in the

So this ending with life is somehow...

Most of that just doesn't penetrate the skin.

There's some issue that if you shaved under your arms and you damaged the

that you could get more aluminium going in. But again, the levels which you

could imagine being transferred to the body are so small compared with any

levels which we think are toxic.

A good two -thirds of all deodorants contain aluminium compounds.

The aluminium reacts with the skin cells and blocks them, stopping the

perspiration.

Aluminium is the most common metal in the Earth's crust, twice as common as

iron. However, it's never found in a pure state, always in stable compounds

other elements.

Nor can it be washed out with normal water.

As a result, for billions of years, aluminium remained firmly contained

the Earth as a component of soil, clay or granite.

The Earth that we're standing on is made of primarily aluminium, silicon and

oxygen. So the Earth's crust...

which is that layer which surrounds the whole of the Earth, is aluminium,

silicon and oxygen.

So aluminium is ubiquitous. It is everywhere.

A plate quarry.

Although a plate is held together by aluminium -ion, it's very difficult to

extract the pure metal.

Bauxite is the only form of stone that contains concentrations of aluminium so

high to make extraction profitable.

Aluminium manager Werner Jager on his way to Porto Trombetas in Brazil, where

his company is working on one of the largest bauxite deposits in the whole

world.

Most integrated aluminium companies worldwide.

Between the different areas, bauxite mining, producing of aluminium in the

smelter and producing products out of it. We have a lot of advantages to have

this kind of interaction between the different areas.

High -grade bauxite is only found in the rainforest areas.

The highest quality bauxite deposits in the world are located in the tropics.

In West Africa, Australia, India, Jamaica.

and northern Brazil.

Here, in the middle of virgin rainforest and hundreds of miles from the nearest

town, a mining enclave has grown up with 6 ,000 workers.

One cannot even leave the road without the company's express permission.

Mining bauxite in the tropics is a comparably simple business.

By contrast with Europe, where the ore has to be extracted from the depths of

the earth, here it lies only a few meters under the ground.

Large areas of rainforest and of humus -rich topsoil have to be sacrificed.

Werner Jager starts his tour of inspection in the mine's central area.

Good to see you.

How is life?

Quite a big exploration here, huh? How long does it take to remove this area?

The box site lies six meters underneath the forest floor.

It was generated through the decomposition of aluminium -rich stones.

The mining area has expanded rapidly, particularly since the introduction of

three -shift round -the -clock mining.

In earlier years, the mines were located around the miners' housing area.

Now, you have to drive a good hour in order to get to the actual mining area.

Porto Trombetas is one of the most profitable bauxite mines in the world.

The aluminium multinationals that own it want to maximise their profit.

It was originally estimated that the bauxite deposit would last 100 years.

Now, they say that it will be exhausted in 30.

Every year, an area equivalent to 250 football fields of prime species -rich

rainforest has to be cut down.

To some extent, it's an issue to remove the rainforest and then to reforest

afterwards again.

But on the other hand, you get a high quality of bauxite, which is definitely

much more value than you have low -grade bauxite and other opportunities.

New specimens of the rainforest's giant trees are cultivated at the Porto

Trombetas Company's own nursery.

Reforestation programs...

are now obligatory for bauxite mining companies all over the world.

It takes at least one to two generations, which means it will take 20

years until you have to first really forest again.

In only three decades' time, It will all be green again.

The next step is the washing out of the elements in the bauxite that do not

contain aluminium.

This requires gigantic quantities of water.

The water from the dammed basin is conducted through pipes into huge

machines. in which earth and other components with low aluminium content

flushed out.

This mud is pumped back into the basin until at some point in time it's put out

of use and dries up.

Almost every day a bauxite freighter leaves the docks at Porto Trombetas.

One freighter.

can carry 70 ,000 tons, enough to fill more than 3 ,000 lorries.

It's heading for the Atlantic coast, about 900 kilometers away.

Aluminium can be used in a greater variety of ways than almost any other

chemical element.

It closes the pores of the skin, promotes the formation of emulsions, and

regulates the consistency and texture of creams and lotions.

Alu capsules keep coffee fresh and preserve the aroma.

Aluminium foil seals yogurt cartons tightly and keeps milk packaging and

medicines stable and light -proof.

In heartburn tablets, aluminium ions neutralize pH values by reacting with

gastric acids.

No other chemical element is so versatile.

Aluminium is the metal of the modern age.

Scientists at Vienna University are investigating the causes of allergies.

In order to try out the various cures and therapies, the illnesses have to be

simulated.

Scientists conducting tests on animals have long known that aluminium is very

well suited to provoking allergies of all kinds, from food allergies and hay

fever to neurodermatitis and asthma.

First of all, the researchers induced allergies by feeding the mice with

or nuts.

together with aluminium hydroxide.

Aluminium hydroxide is also contained in medicines that are widely used for

treating heartburn or stomach problems.

Scientists have discovered that the quantities of aluminium in the medicines

likewise sufficient to provoke allergies.

Clearly, aluminium can make the immune system sensitive to a substance that is

taken at the same time.

So far, we have taken out the most important food allergens and were able

show that food allergens can be created here with aluminum as an aid.

If you want, you could actually take the entire kitchen and use aid.

And from my perspective today, we could actually do everything here in different

intensities, but we could induce food allergies.

Recent years have seen the number of allergy sufferers increasing sharply,

especially amongst children.

Studies show that the risk is twice as high if the child's mother took

containing aluminium, during pregnancy.

Some of these medicines are sold over the counter at the chemists.

Herwig Holzer was for many years head of the Department for Kidney Illnesses at

the Medical University of Graz.

He recalls a disturbing phenomenon that had been observed in dialysis stations

all over the world.

After intensive investigations, the cause was finally found.

It was all related to certain new medicines for kidney patients that were

similar in composition to the medication against heartburn.

Over a number of years, the chartered accountant Günter Perrault began to

from an increasing number of inexplicable mental blackouts.

At first, his wife, Graziella, thought it must be some kind of burnout or

depression. But after a while, Gunther Paroll had to give up his work.

Finally, the neurologist became suspicious and decided to send Gunter

for a clock test, the standard test for Alzheimer's.

Mr. Paroll, please. In two.

Take it in an empty circle and fill it out.

Make a clock out of this circle.

In the circle. You have to show it here.

Twelve. Let's start with that. It's always the easiest.

Where is the twelve?

You probably also know somehow where it is.

Up there. Yes.

Here. 12.

And then the other numbers come. 6, 7, 8, 9.

Now there has to be a time shown,

yes? 10 to 11.

10 to 11 now.

10 to 11.

I'm standing like this.

No,

that doesn't work, that doesn't work.

No, right? No, that's not true.

10 to 11 must be here.

So the clock always has two signs, big and small, and they stand on 10 to 11.

Or how?

Here in this one? Yes.

11 must be... No, that's 11.

No.

I don't know.

Okay. I don't know.

Good.

Let's put that aside.

Gunter Parol always exercised great restraint in his use of medicine, except

with his pills against heartburn.

We've known each other for 28 years and since then my husband has been taking

this medicine. Well, maybe even earlier, before we met.

Yes, but I don't know anything about the time.

Yes, so definitely over 25, 28 years.

High doses, look, can lead to aluminum deposits, especially in the nerves and

bone tissue.

It can lead to brain damage, look, in the brackets it even says dementia.

Yes. And lead to bleeding.

Oh, what a shame.

Therefore, with insufficient kidney performance and long -term intake, the

aluminum mirror should be regularly checked.

The spokesman of the European Medicines Agency sees no reason for action to be

taken.

from these preparations, this preparation should not be taken for a

And if it is taken for a longer time, it is absolutely necessary to look for a

doctor.

So a long -term enrichment without medical care is actually almost excluded

here. And we must not forget, we also have the pharmacist, the pharmacist, who

gives this preparation and also has a duty of clarification here and has to

point out these warning signs.

We have never experienced that, not even in the best pharmacies.

No, that's true.

Yes, really.

We have never been pointed at it.

I think we'll plant the same leaves here.

Do you like it?

Yes. In that area, right? You have to take the other side, exactly.

But deeper.

A few days ago there was an article in the magazine where they were thinking

about developing a new drug in the near future. It could be too late for me.

That could also be the case.

It could be that I say goodbye beforehand.

It would be nice if I stayed here a little longer.

Of all the elements found in abundance on Earth, aluminium is the only one that

is not used by living beings and is not necessary for any biological function.

In terms of evolution, that is extremely unusual, as nature, in principle,

always uses whatever is available for some kind of positive purpose.

We have not managed to identify one single benefit.

of aluminium in terms of promoting any biological system clearly it's a huge

benefit to mankind in material science and the many ways in which we use

aluminium in the aluminium age but does it benefit any biochemical system and

we're not just talking about humans we're talking about from the smallest

bacterium right through to humans we have no evidence that any organism

actively uses aluminium for any beneficial purpose

a

fishing village in bacarena in the amazon basin in brazil The federal state

Pará largely consists of rainforests and mighty rivers, such as the Rio Pará,

which flows parallel to the Amazon into the Atlantic.

The river is where the local population live and also is their source of food.

Two decades ago, however, an aluminium refinery was built in the immediate

vicinity and everything has changed.

The wind blows aluminium dust over distances of several kilometres.

It's very steep.

It's very thick, I don't know.

The fish move away.

It's all around this edge.

Twenty years ago, it was very possible.

We would arrive with a canoe full of fish.

We would sell it to the land. We would buy it.

Not now.

It's not possible anymore.

This is my company.

This is the biggest aluminum plant in the world. We have a capacity to produce

more than 6 million tons per year.

6 million tons per year. 6 million tons per year.

In 2011, Norsk Hydro took over ownership of the aluminum refinery in Bacarena.

Thus becoming...

one of the few multinational companies exercising control over the whole

production chain from bauxite ore to raw aluminium.

We receive bauxite from Trombetas by ship here in the

port.

At the dock, the bauxite is given a second fine grinding.

The separation of aluminium from iron and the other components requires large

quantities of sodium hydroxide.

This chemical, also known as caustic soda, is the strongest one of its kind,

it is feared by the staff.

Caustic soda releases bauxite's aluminium -rich components to form the

-called rich liquid.

The aluminium hydroxide settles at the bottom of the tall silos.

As much as possible of the caustic soda is siphoned off and used again.

More than half of the bauxite is useless and is separated off as red mud.

Red mud contains half the periodic table of the elements.

including many poisonous substances such as mercury, arsenic and residual

quantities of aluminium.

All these things mixed up with caustic soda makes red mud into a very

frightening chemical.

The working conditions in the plant are extreme.

No caustic mud is allowed to come into contact with the worker's skin.

With tropical temperatures far in excess of 30 degrees in the shade.

At the end of the process, the red mud is loaded up onto lorries and brought to

the dumping area.

This disposal site is located next to the refinery and takes up twice as much

space.

All one can see is millions and millions of tons of hazardous waste that cannot

be used for any purpose at all.

What looks like snow is aluminium hydroxide.

It is used in many cosmetic products and forms of medication.

It can be used to turn liquids into gels, to reinforce the effectiveness of

vaccines, or to provoke allergies in animal experiments.

The refinery's most important export product, however, is aluminium oxide.

which is turned into a fine white powder by being fired at 1300 degrees

centigrade. The majority of this is exported as a raw material to be cast

made into the light metal familiar to us as aluminium.

The fisherman Jose Brandao has caught half a kilo of prawns today.

That's just enough for lunch for his family.

Jose used to have two employees, but now he only has help from his 10 -year -old

son, who actually should be going to school.

José and his wife Andrea hope that one day Carlos will be able to work for the

aluminium company.

Carlos!

Come and eat!

In the last 20 years, Baccarina has tripled in population.

The sleepy little provincial backwater now has 150 ,000 inhabitants.

The uniforms of the aluminium workers are a constant feature of the city.

It is quiet and peaceful in the areas where the managers live, and there is a

high level of security.

Recently, a modern housing estate was opened for aluminium workers with

illnesses and for unemployed fishermen.

The doctor said, look, stop playing ball, don't ride a bike.

And I asked, why, doctor? He said he could break my bones easily.

And recently, he's been here for three months.

I broke my leg. There are seven pins here.

I can't sleep.

I have a constant headache.

When I wake up in the morning, I'm more tired than when I lay down.

I burned 60 % of my body.

It's vapor with...

Condensed, mixed with a chemical product. It comes contaminated.

And lately I live like this.

I live with the medicines I take.

These are medicines, I mean, for me to sleep, these are medicines for me to

sleep.

34 years old.

You're retired.

I think being retired, for one thing, would be good.

But not for the other one.

How are they going to hire a guy who is 34 years old? So it's because the

business is serious. I'm 29 years old.

In May I turned 5 years of employment.

And it's hard for me today to turn my back, to step back, knowing that I got

sick in there.

They take the best and we always get sick.

We confronted the company management with these accusations.

A spokesman for Hydro admitted that the workers were indeed exposed to various

negative factors, such as chemicals, heat or noise.

However, they added that Hydro had only been the majority holder in the company

since February 2011.

and was just in the process of introducing a comprehensive security

The management was looking forward to bringing about a significant reduction

health risks for their staff.

There are also plans for the constantly growing Red Mud Mountain, though these

will not all be easy to put into practice.

One way to use the red mud is, for instance, that you use it for roadworks,

have these ground pavements made of it.

Also realized has been to make bricks or tiles out of it. The tiles and the

bricks you can also use to make pavements, or we have also here a kind

experimental house where we have built houses out of these red mud bricks.

We have tried this.

You extract all remaining liquid, which occurs time by time, including when rain

falls. You extract the whole liquid, which contains, of course, this caustic

soda. You treat this, you recycle whatever is possible from the caustic

and even here, out of the deposit, you bring back recycled caustic soda into

refinery, into the aluminium plant.

So much for the theory.

For the people who live in the surrounding villages, water has an

different significance.

They swim and wash in it. They drink it and they use it for cooking, as they

have done for many generations.

Silvania Maria dos Santos comes from an indigenous family.

Every day she goes to fetch water from the river to cook with.

There are no mains water pipes here, and only very few can afford to buy

drinking water from the supermarket.

My water was very clean, we took a bath, drank water, nothing happened, I had no

skin disease, I washed clothes.

Today, my ancestors were able to have the chance to drink good, clean water

the land. Now we can't, because it's all contaminated.

They have their bodies all bursting with water, but as we take a bath, we have

our bodies all rusting, so we have to pee.

Similar stories can be heard in the neighbouring villages.

Because of the water that we take a bath in the water of the well, there was

this itching in her arms, in her legs, everything is full of mud because

of this water that we consume here, which was contaminated due to the large

amount of pollution that came down in the water of the river.

The premises of the aluminium factory are not far from the village.

This is Rio Maracupi.

Its water is polluted because, argues the company, there is no organised waste

disposal system.

Finally, we find ourselves at the back of the red mud dumping site.

Three years ago, The basin overflowed after heavy rain, and the mud flooded

land. The company managers regret that the accident happened.

Now they say stricter security regulations are in force.

both by the soil and by the air, because if you take the dust, this dust is

thrown on top of the trees, on top of the houses in the field, it rains and

dust from the trees goes down to the soil.

And if you have an infiltration of a large basin like this by the soil, you

be sure that all the greenhouse gas is contaminated here in our region.

In 2010, there was an accident at the Hungarian aluminium factory.

When red mud of just this kind got out of control, the result was one of

Europe's worst ever environmental disasters.

On the premises of the aluminium factory of Oika, a dam holding up a huge red

mud reservoir burst.

A one metre high wave of sludge.

poured out and rolled towards the small town of Devica.

Hardly any of the inhabitants knew that this red liquid was not water, but

highly caustic sodium hydroxide.

Ivan Benko from the local television station instinctively grabbed his camera

when the flooding entered the area where he lived.

The street became a torrent.

Finally, Benko reached safety on the terrace of his house.

This is footage taken by his wife.

Only when he got to the bathroom did Benko notice that this was no normal

The caustic lye had actually dissolved his socks.

A neighbor had fallen over and was covered from head to foot in sludge.

The fire brigade took both of them to the hospital.

Every morning my skin was wrinkled because of the bandage.

I felt that something was wrinkled for three days. On the fourth day I said

I didn't feel anything.

It turned out that this lung worked so well

that it even ate the meat part.

The place hit worst was the neighboring village of Kolontar.

József Fuchs has come to visit the ruins of his family farmhouse.

About a million cubic meters of highly toxic liquid was spread over the

surrounding area.

Ten people died, and more than a hundred had to be taken to clinics, suffering

from serious chemical burns.

Those numbers take no account of the long -term effects.

A year later, the part of the town where István Benko's house stood has

disappeared entirely.

Benko's health has also been ruined by the catastrophe.

His whole body is covered in scars.

Now, he cannot even think of carrying a camera anymore.

The aluminium plant, on the other hand, has long since gone back into operation.

The aluminium powder from Brazil has arrived in Germany at the industrial

of Neuss Düsseldorf.

This is where the final round of the production process takes place.

Enormous quantities of electrical energy are required to separate pure

aluminium. from its connection to oxygen.

An electrolysis cell you can imagine like a bathtub.

At the bottom of the bathtub you will find plates for the cathodes which are

made out of carbon.

And due to putting a lot of current inside this process you extract

which is then going as liquid metal at the bottom of the bathtub.

When you compare us with steel, we take roughly 10 times more energy than one

kilogram of steel.

In Germany, here at the location in Neuss, energy is roughly around 45 % of

production costs.

When I look at smelters outside of Europe, for them, the cost for supply of

current, of electrical energy, is just 30%. The production of aluminium

requires 10 times as much energy as the production of steel.

The energy is then contained within the metal, which is why liquid aluminium is

so extremely explosive.

A Boeing 767 has a net weight of 82 .3 tonnes. About 30 tonnes

is aluminium.

As the Norwegian expert explains, this is why the Twin Towers caved in with

spectacular speed.

Aluminium is not dangerous at all.

Aluminium turns to be dangerous when it becomes molten.

Shortly before the structural collapse, The aluminium in the wrecked aircraft

had reached such a high temperature that it melted.

Some of the films which we are shown is showing that molten aluminium is coming

out of the window and streaming down and the temperature is very high and my

guess is around 800 to 900 degrees C.

The melt is going downstairs and go down to the next floor and meet water of the

sprinkler device.

which we know were in every room in that building.

The explosions before the collapse prompted the wildest conspiracy

But if you're familiar with the properties of aluminium, explains

there is no mystery about what happened.

That aluminium plus water gives you aluminium oxide plus hydrogen gas.

You have a big explosion, and we are talking about an ordinary bomb of the

of 700 kilos TNT at least. It could even be more.

The official government report on the collapse of the Twin Towers does not

mention aluminium a single time.

Timorous 10, 9, 8.

All three engines up and burning.

Two, one, zero, and liftoff, the final liftoff of Atlantis. On the shoulders

of the space shuttle, America will continue the dream.

Just as violent, though more controlled, is the release of energy associated

with space rockets, as shown here in the final flight of the space shuttle

Atlantis.

Aluminium has been used for years as rocket fuel because of its high energy

density.

When

it

is recycled, on the other hand, aluminum can be melted down with only half the

amount of energy that is required for scrap iron.

Aluminum is a very precious metal.

When you go for recycling, every kilogram you can bring back to your

brings you very much profit and value, and this makes aluminum so good.

properties excellent and you have a very precious material where you get a lot

of money when you bring it into recycling loop

every step in the production

process multiplies the value of the original material by five from bauxite

the oxide powder and then on to the metal bars that can be used to make any

shapes or sheet thickness required increasingly

The most costly and environmentally unfriendly production phase is carried

in developing countries.

In sun creams, aluminium optimises spreadability and raises the sun

factor.

Aluminium compounds are ideal for cleaning swimming pools because they

with particles suspended in the water and make them form plagues.

Aluminium grilling trays prevent food charring.

Aluminium foil is used in every modern household.

We live in the age of aluminium.

Its glorious shine is everywhere.

Because surface water is usually dirtier than groundwater, it is often cleaned

with the help of aluminium compounds.

This was the case at the Camelford Waterworks in the southwest of England,

there was an incident in 1988 that had dramatic consequences.

I used to come here every morning to get my morning papers, and I walked along

the river here, and the whole of the riverbed...

was coated in dead fish.

Not a single one alive anywhere.

And I wondered what on earth had happened.

But in the evening, my wife took a bath.

And when she washed her hair and mixed the soap with the water, it went bright

blue. And she was quite surprised and not alarmed by this. She just, just, it

was surprise.

It happened Wednesday night. We didn't get to know anything about it until

Thursday lunchtime.

By then, you know, we had a cup of coffee in the morning, it tasted bad,

thought it could have been, you know, it could be anything.

It stained the flannels, couldn't clean your teeth because you put toothpaste in

your mouth and it all foamed up.

At the time, there was some talk at the waterworks of a little technical

problem. The water is perfectly safe, even for drinking, although the

palatability of it means that people won't be drinking it.

It is safe for all general purposes, although I will stress that one or two

people will find it a skin irritant.

In the end, Doug Cross was able to clarify the connection between the dead

and the strange taste the drinking water had acquired.

When I came down in the morning, there were dead fish here, but not upstream,

above the weir.

So the pollution that got into the river could not have come down the river like

this. It started here.

And then someone said, up the road here, they were emptying the water mains onto

the road during the night, flushing them into the river on the other side of the

bridge. And that is what killed the fish.

In other words, our drinking water was poisonous.

After a number of weeks, representatives of the waterworks finally made a

statement about what had actually happened.

A lorry driver had discharged a load of aluminium sulphate into the wrong tank,

and the contaminated drinking water flowed on into the district water mains.

When the mistake was noticed, the works management simply let the aluminium

water run off into the river, which explains why the fish died.

The biologist Doug Cross took charge of the local initiative.

What we need to know now is what is the long -term effect on people.

And I think, in fact, that there's been a certain amount of negligence in

following this up. All the evidence available has not been collected.

He and his wife Carol were also among those who drank contaminated water.

Although we did everything we could to avoid the water, we must have drunk.

A substantial amount, because it's stored in the top tank in the roof here

this house, which is where we lived.

And then my wife began to complain of the arthritis getting very bad.

Her sort of illness was relatively mild at the time.

Many people were far worse. People told me they had been driving their cars and

they had bad memories. And they would stop suddenly in the side of the road

think, where was I going?

And why am I on this side of the road? I'm on the wrong side of the road.

like this became common.

Then I started getting phone calls from farmers.

One farmer says, I had 40 lambs in a field with a water pipe from the tank,

the town.

And another field, next field, I had 200 more with a natural spring.

And all those in the natural spring field were fine.

But 10 out of the 40 drinking tap water died.

And then people told me about similar problems with cows. When you hear of

animals dying, big animals, and then somebody says, oh, well, it doesn't

humans. You know that they're lying.

In 2003, 15 years after the incident, Doug Cross noticed worrying changes in

wife Carol's behaviour.

The first thing that was obvious was that she was having difficulty in the

When they asked for the money, she would just give them a random amount of money

and smile, and she didn't know if it was the right amount or not.

And then I noticed she was buying the same thing over and over again.

So I had to take charge of that.

She'd made some wonderful paintings on stones and very fine artwork, craftwork,

very detailed, and gradually the quality fell and then she just gave it up.

She could no longer do it.

She became extremely weak and gradually she lost everything.

And she said to me one day, will you look after me? And I didn't understand

she was meaning, what she meant. Only afterwards did I realise what the issue

was.

And then on one occasion she looked at me and said quietly, goodbye, goodbye,

goodbye.

And that's the last time she spoke to me.

A short time later, Carol died at the age of 59.

I received a telephone call one day, and it was an unusual conversation because

Doug explained to me not only that his wife had just died, but also that he

was concerned because the cause of death was unknown,

and he...

didn't want to accept an unknown cause of death.

On instructions from the forensic medicine authorities, Christopher Exley

sample from Carol Cross's brain.

He conducted an analysis and checked up on the aluminium content.

There is no normal level.

Normal level would be no aluminium.

The reality is that we all have aluminium in our brain.

Something like one or two micrograms of aluminium per gram of tissue dry weight.

What we have found, for example, in certain cases of Alzheimer's disease, is

that this figure might be as high as four, five or six. In one of the samples

from Mrs Cross's brain, we found 23 micrograms per gram dry weight, which

is...

almost unheard of. One of the highest levels that we have ever measured.

And we have probably measured more brains and aluminium contents of human

than probably any other group in the world.

The Camelford Citizens

Initiative is still active today.

Carol Cross was not the only one to suffer this fate.

Bridget struggled a lot with her last 18 months. I didn't know until three weeks

before she died. She kept it quite a close secret.

She struggled and struggled and struggled. You're 61, I believe.

I do remember working and I had terrible, terrible headaches and so

tired I just wanted to sleep.

He began to suffer with his memory towards the end. Yes.

And he also developed epilepsy. The test results showed that he had severe

abnormalities in the perfusion of his brain. And the specialists commented

these were unlike anything she'd ever seen before.

Basically, she was saying that there was no blood flowing through many parts of

Richard's brain. It was dead.

There was an incident in the UK about 20 years ago at Camelford.

Afterwards, there were lots of people that could demonstrate that they had

cognitive impairment.

Okay? Because they had a vested interest.

Okay? If they were cognitively impaired, they might get some compensation.

If there was no damage, they wouldn't get any compensation.

And that's one of the problems you get.

Aluminium is used for the preparation of drinking water at many locations in

Europe.

In the rural industrial area, for instance, it's used in the form of

chloride, which reacts with the particles of dirt.

Once it has been treated, the water flows into the filter basins, where the

aluminium particles settle at the bottom of the tank.

If necessary, the water is cleaned a second time at the water work.

With the poly -aluminum clearant, if we have a very strong water pollution, we

can also operate a flocking system in our plant in the waterworks,

where these particles are tied again and then knocked off in our filter.

Then it is this so -called drinking water, then it is definitely clean.

Drinking water is also purified with the help of aluminium in many parts of

France. However, a small residual quantity of aluminium remains in the

Scientists from Bordeaux University conducted a 15 -year study to establish

whether this is a danger for the residents in the various water

And their suspicions were confirmed.

Aluminium does raise the risk of Alzheimer's.

The epidemiological study has shown that the increase, especially from about

60 years old, was increased by a factor of 2 in

Alzheimer's disease. The conclusions are clear and clear at this level, that the

contribution of aluminum, especially to people of a certain age, was an

aggravating factor, presumably, of Alzheimer's disease.

André Picot recommended that the waterworks should change to using iron

which is an unproblematic cleaning agent.

Around a third of France's waterworks, including those in Paris, have followed

his advice.

Water supplied by Eau de Paris is entirely aluminium -free.

However, because the adaptation of the infrastructure is expensive and the iron

technology is somewhat more complicated, the majority of the French population

are having to wait for the changeover.

Three years ago, the dentist Gerhard Breuer from Berlin was diagnosed with

Alzheimer's. Simple everyday tasks now present major challenges for him and his

partner Birgit.

For tomorrow, lamb fillets.

Do you know that we have them? Yes.

Wonderful. Do you think you can do it? I'll write it down for you.

I'll find the store.

You'll find the store, yes. But do you also find the lamb fillet? Yes, but if

they have it.

And for Lolle we need sausages.

Come back healthy.

Let's see.

Where are the sausages?

Where is

my

car?

Does anyone know where my car is?

We do not know whether aluminium is a contributory factor or indeed a cause of

Alzheimer's disease, but it doesn't change anything about the fact that

aluminium is a neurotoxin. It doesn't change anything about the fact that

aluminium is associated with the main pathological features of Alzheimer's

disease. It doesn't change the fact that if you live in certain areas with a

certain amount of aluminium in your water supply, you'll have a higher

of Alzheimer's disease in those areas.

It doesn't change any of the associations that exist. They all still

None of them prove that aluminium causes or indeed contributes.

But then again, no one has ever shown otherwise.

Gerhard Breuer shows us the dental practice where he spent his working

Dentists often work with aluminium alloys.

Connections have been established.

between dental technicians with health problems and their exposure to

Three years ago, Gerhard Breuer had to close his practice.

Since then, many things have become unfamiliar to him.

The drillers are the ones with which you can work on the teeth

or the soles. And such instruments are used

to see better, around the corners and so on.

And then, of course, you have to look with these hands,

i .e. look with your fingers, to see if everything is in order.

Surprisingly enough, in their investigations into the causes of

mainstream scientists still keep well clear of aluminium.

I'm absolutely confident that these Alzheimer's would exist in the absence

aluminium.

But would it occur so young in people? In other words, perhaps you'd have to

live to 150 in the absence of aluminium.

Or would it be as aggressive?

Perhaps it would be much less aggressive and it wouldn't be so debilitating.

And some people's lives would not be so poor in the period from when they're

diagnosed up until when they die. To a large extent, people now think, oh,

it's a dead issue.

Aluminium is not really a health problem.

Christopher Eckley does not share this view at all.

Research into aluminium has been stopped on purpose. Because that has happened,

we have no...

We're not even close to having answers to many of these questions on aluminium

and human health.

In spite of the small number of research projects receiving financial support,

the number of studies showing that aluminium is a health hazard is

increasing.

At the Université Paris -Est, for example, where Romain Guéradi...

head of the Department for Neuromuscular Disease, was confronted with a new kind

of illness affecting an increasing number of people.

The farmer, Luc Braconnier, is a typical case.

He suffers from constant tiredness and such severe muscular pain that he can

hardly do his work anymore.

They had pain in the muscles and they...

experienced very profound and abnormal fatigue and a refreshing sleep and a

variety of cognitive disorders that were very disturbing to them.

The doctor takes a sample of tissue from a muscle.

At first, the findings are puzzling.

The inflamed parts of the muscle contain huge numbers of macrophages, the

scavenger cells of the immune system.

We made electron microscopy. We found the inclusion of unknown nature in the

macrophages. We first believed that it was calcium, but calcium

staining remained negative.

And finally...

We send a sample to biophysics departments and they

only say to us, it appears to be aluminium.

We do not know why it is aluminium, but it is aluminium.

Aluminium is added to vaccines to make them more effective.

These additives are regarded by the specialists as a dirty little secret

nobody really knows how aluminium makes the vaccines more effective and what

happens to the aluminium.

in the human body.

Everybody thought it was eliminated promptly after injection in the urine.

Now we know it is not the case. The body can retain for more than 15 years the

aluminium in the body and nobody knows exactly what is the fate of this

aluminium in the body.

Will it be eliminated by the urine one day? Even this is not clear.

Girardi and his team discovered that most humans and animals are capable of

breaking the aluminium down.

A small percentage, however, react abnormally. The scavenger cells of the

system absorb the aluminium particles but cannot break them down.

The particles become permanent fixtures and aluminium is spread around the whole

organism.

A part of particles escape from the injected muscle and disseminate

the body and can enter to distant sites after circulation for months and months

in the blood circulation and penetrate progressively in distal organs such as

spleen but also liver and at the end very lately and very slowly into

the brain.

In May 2012, experts met up in Granada, in Spain, for the 8th International

Congress on Autoimmunity. For the first time ever, an important part of the

Congress is devoted to the effects of aluminium adjuvant.

The president of the Congress is the Israeli immunologist Yehuda Schoenfeld.

Thank you very much for sending me for autoimmunity.

He recognizes the importance of his colleagues' research.

This is the biggest autoimmunity meeting ever.

It has 2 ,300 participants.

And we have two or three sessions dedicated to the issue of adjuvants.

It's a combination of magnesium carbonate and aluminium hydroxide.

autoimmune phenomena or autoimmune diseases.

But there's very little doubt that aluminum is a neurotoxin, and it does

range of things, impairment of memory, cognition, and psychomotor control.

Understanding the way aluminum works is the answer to understanding its

effectiveness.

Inner mineral particles can enter the brain using a Trojan horse mechanism.

This is very important. It is the first time that it can be demonstrated for

sure that particles of aluminum can penetrate the brain as a whole

particle still coated with the aluminum coat.

To many of those attending these sessions, it was a novel information.

Our role as organizers of this meeting is to spread information because little

knowledge is dangerous. We do not condemn a vaccine.

We do not want to abolish vaccine.

But I wish and I pray that I would know who is susceptible and who is not to

avoid the use of aluminum.

The conference came to the conclusion that producers of vaccines should invest

in the development of aluminium -free alternatives.

But the EU authorities see no urgent need for action.

Back in Frankfurt, Eva is throwing a party for her friends.

It is now a year since she completed her chemotherapy.

But above all, that you have accompanied me the last year, which had its depths

rather than its heights on many days.

Whether you have sent me SMS every day, cooked mashed potatoes during the

scheme, whether you were there for me as a partner, like my friend. Thank you

for just being there and to you!

Pandora's box has been opened.

Aluminium has been let out.

So how is this going to impact on future life on Earth? Well, the first

indications are not great. And we need to try to solve that problem. We need to

learn how to live in the aluminium age, which is not going to go away in the

near future without the consequences or possible consequences of this increasing

body burden.

of aluminium, the increasing incidence of possible aluminium related disease.