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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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From:
Mike Rossander <[log in to unmask]>
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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 15 Jul 2013 15:31:11 -0700
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Aluminum is the third-most common element in the earth's crust (8.1% by volume - just behind oxygen at 46.6% and silicon at 27.7%).  Aluminum is, quite literally, everywhere.  The average person ingests 30-50 mg per day.  The incremental aluminum exposure through cookware is considered a very low exposure source compared to all the other sources that we take for granted every day.  
 
There any many sites which qualify that last statement with two exceptions - when 1) highly acidic or 2) highly basic foods are cooked and/or stored in direct contact with aluminum.  Those qualifications assume that you are talking about unsealed aluminum.  There are several treatments including anodizing which will make the aluminum far less reactive.  Without testing, we don't know whether your extractor part is already sealed or not.  Regardless, let's put the untreated aluminum into perspective.  Cooking tomato sauce in aluminum is considered the acid test for cookware risk.  (Sorry, I just couldn't avoid the pun.)  According to one commonly cited study, tomato sauce boiled in glass had 9 ppm of aluminum already.  Cooking the same tomato sauce in an unsealed aluminum pot (pH of around 4.4 and a cooking time of an hour) raised the exposure to 12 ppm.  That sounds like a big increase but it's only 1% on top of your average total daily
 exposure (assuming a 100 g serving) and trivial compared to your average antacid, two teaspoons of which can contain 83,000 ppm aluminum or about 830 mg per dose.
 
Honey can be slightly more acidic than tomato sauce (3.9 on average) but we work at room temperature and based on your description of the extractor part, the fraction and length of time of exposure is far, far smaller.  
 
Measuring or even estimating the exposure would be quite difficult but here's a field test that might give you a sense for the likelihood of the risk.  Acidic (or basic) foods which leach aluminum out of cookware will leave visible pitting.  1 mg of aluminum would be about one-third of a cubic millimeter.  Use the extractor as is and look for pitting after use.  Maybe exaggerate the effect by leaving one end of the piece still covered in honey (wrapped in plastic to protect it from bees and ants), then clean and examine it right before your next extraction.  If you start to see pitting, then I'd consider taking the risk of paint chips.  On the other hand, if after many uses and long exposure you still see no evidence of pitting, I think you can conclude that the potential exposure to aluminum through your extractor is small.  
 
Incidentally, honey and especially sourwood honey already has a significant concentration of aluminum from the nectar.  There are a large number of studies measuring trace elements in honey.  Most are paywalled but a few were accessible.  One study of Argentinian honey found 2.6 ppm aluminum.  Others that I could find were in the same range though some were higher.  According to a study by John Ambrose in the 1970s, the local concentration in North Carolina's Coastal Plain was enough to turn the honey blue.  Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the original study or a cite to his measured concentrations.
 
Mike Rossander

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