Neurotoxicological Study on Aluminum

摘要

Aluminum (Al) is an environmentally ubiquitous element and accounts for 8.88% of the total weight of the earth crust. Under normal circumstance, there is little Al in the body of living things. In recent years, opportunities have been provided for human being's extensive exposure to and ubiquitous contamination of aluminum through respiratory, digestive tracts and other pathways, because of extracting of aluminum ore, aluminum smelting, processing and utilization of aluminum products including food package, food ware, medicine adjuvant, building materials and so on, especially polluted water source by dissolved Al salt from earth after acid rain. So, aluminum load in bodies of both Al-exposed workers and normal residents increased much. After entering into the body, Al~+ becomes Al(H_2O)~(3+), conjugated with transferring, albumin or citric acid ions, and is distributed in brain, liver, kidney, bone and lung, in which Al is cumulated during long-term exposure and may damage the health. Many research reports show that Al passes through blood brain barrier (BBB), gets into brain tissue, and induces serious neurotoxic manifestations such as decreased learning-memory function, difficult mental concentration, motion dysfunction, etc. Plenty of reports implicate that Al has something with Alzheimer's Disease (AD), Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Parkinsonism Dementia Complex, and so on. These diseases interfere with human being's life expectancy and quality seriously, so neurotoxic mechanism of Al should be carefully studied in order to prevent the adverse effect of aluminum exposure. Research on occupational Al-exposure supplies an ideal pathway for studying the toxicological effect of excessive Al-intake.