November 2025

Aluminium in drinking water

You may be aware that aluminium is the most abundant metal in the earth crust but it is also a very toxic metal in biology. Chemistry lessons in school never touch this subject and even many chemists and biologists have never learned anything about aluminium. I will therefore give you a very quick introduction.

Despite aluminium's abundance there is not one biological process that uses aluminium. Most aluminium on earth is in a biologically inert form of aluminium oxides or aluminium silicates. These are aluminium salts that do not disolve in water. The dirt in your garden contains a significant amount of aluminium oxides and silicates. Plants, animals and humans have no problem with this form of aluminium. They can handle this natural form. Humans have however managed to create something that does not naturally exist in large amounts on earth: aluminium metal and Al³⁺ ions. These are the toxic forms of aluminium. Acid rain kills trees because it converts aluminium oxides into Al³⁺ ions.

There is a very good substack by Dr. Chris Exley about the effects of these toxic forms of aluminium: https://drchristopherexley.substack.com/. Al³⁺ ions cause alzheimer's, blood cloth, strokes, autism,...

Al³⁺ ions are toxic because they disrupt the zeta-potential. Zeta-potential is a measure for how well water can hold fine particles in suspension. Blood is such a suspension of fine red blood cells in water. If you add a very small amount of Al³⁺ ions to blood then the strongly positivly charges aluminium ions attract the negatively charged blood cells and they clump together. You get the microstrokes often associated with the aluminium adjuvants in vaccines.

A study by Rondeau et al. (2009) found a significant association between high exposures to aluminium in drinking water (>0.1 mg/day) and the risks of cognitive decline and dementia. Note that regulators in most countries (including Canada) consider an aluminium concentration of 0.2mg/liter of drinking water acceptable. In other words you could exceed what this study considered high when you drink more than 1/2 liter of tap water per day.

Why is there aluminium in my tap water?

If you have a swimming pool then you might be familiar with something known as "clarifier". It's a white salt or a watery liquid and it creates crystal clear pool water when you add it. The water becomes clear because it kills almost all life in your pool and clumps stuff together allowing the filter to take the clumps out. It's a deadly substance and it's one that stays. Adding a bit of "clarifier" is good for the season and even next year. Unlike chlorine it does not disappear. Many people are not aware of what "clarifier" is and what it does. Manufactures of pool chemicals are not required to disclose the content. These "clarifiers" contain aluminium salts which release Al³⁺ ions.

I don't use "clarifiers" anymore and I am very careful when swimming in a pool that is super clear. Your body can absorb Al³⁺ ions through the skin.

Municipal water treatment plants use Al³⁺ ions for the same reasons that pool owners use "clarifiers". It increases filter efficiency and it kills a lot of life that is naturally present in water. Water treatment plants refer to this as "coagulation" or "flocation" stage.

The different stages at a water filtration plant

Most water treatment plant operators are aware of the toxicity of the aluminium they add. Canada has a guideline available at https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications/healthy-living/guidelines-canadian-drinking-water-quality-guideline-technical-document-aluminum.html (local pdf copy) and it mentions the neurotoxicity and reproductive/developmental toxicity of aluminium ions in water. The problem is that there is no easy way to get the aluminium out after it has done its job at the water filtration plant.

The aluminium ion concentration is not constant if you have a responsibly managed water filtration plant. They can add much less during the winter when the incomming water is barely above freezing. I measure during the winter 0.02mg/l and 0.1mg/l during the summer.

Well water vs tap water

Well water may be contaminated with agricultural chemicals (pesticides, glyphosate, etc) but it contains no aluminium ions. Water treatment plants oxidize the agricultural chemicals and destroy them but the first treatement stage adds aluminium ions. If your house has a well then keep it. You can easily add an oxidation stage. Even UV-light irradition destroys some of the agricultural chemicals but removing aluminium ions from municipal water without removing also beneficial minerals is nearly impossible. The only practial way is to use a reverse osmosis filter and then add some beneficial salts such as magnesium or drink daily some mineral water in addition to the reverse osmosis water. Use reverse osmosis water also for cooking. No amount of boiling can remove aluminium ions.

Fiji water

Nature has a trick to manage the small amounts of naturally occuring aluminium ions: Silica water. This is a process that Chris Exley discovered. Water with high amounts of aluminium ions kills fish (e.g salmon) but when you add a bit of silica rich water such as Fiji water then the fish survives the aluminium ion insult.

Silica water is basically sand disolved in water. The only problem is that sand does not readily disolve in water. It takes thousands of years for a tiny amount of sand to disolve. It's not clear if chemically made silica water is equal to naturally formed silica water. If you are not careful then the chemically disolved silica could convert back to quartz crystals and destory your kidneys. Natural mineral waters are a safe option and there are a number of mineral waters that contain useful amounts of silica. I am listing them at the end of this article. Fiji water has about six times as much silca as Evian but both do the job.

What works for the salmon fish can also work in your body. If you drink some Fiji water or Evian daily then this will slowly remove aluminium from your body. It can reverse alzheimer's and make you more resillient against strokes and heart disease. It helps you maintain your body's zeta potential. The zeta potential diminishes as we age and you die when the zeta potentialfalls below a minimum level. Keeping the zeta potential up does not make you live forever but it can prevent many diseases of old age.

There is no life without water

You might have learned that the phases of matter are solid, liquid, and gas. We have heared it so many times that we believe it. It's wrong. There is at least one more common phase: plasma. It comes after gas. Water has another interesting phase: EZ water or liquid christaline water. If you have never heared of it then google it or watch some youtube videos on EZ water. EZ water is nothing that you can bottle. It's a scam if somebody offers you to buy EZ water. This phase known as EZ water is essential for the creation of life. EZ water is generated when you sit in the sun or you use incandescent light bulbs at your desk. Water is "the secret ingredient" for life. It's the only substance that has these phases.

Doctors know that good quality water is associated with good health but few understand that aluminium ions destory health. Doctors put aluminium ions in vaccines because these ions trigger an immune reaction. Our immune systems identify the aluminium ions immendiatley as toxic and that is why they attack it. I think it will take at least another decade until aluminium ions are widely known to be a problem.

Life as we know it needs water without highly positively charged ions. Aluminium ions are the most common highly positivly charged ions. For good health you need to have good water. Avoid beverages in aluminium cans. Don't cook with aluminium foil and avoid municipal drinking water. Aluminium is a main contaminant of drinking water that is never listed as a contaminant.

I found recently a video titeled "Freedom Summit 2025 | Dr. Jana Schmidt | Naturopathic Pearls: The Importance of a Firm Foundation" which talks about aluminium ions in combination with glyphosate. Click the below image to watch the video:

https://rumble.com/v6zwpze-freedom-summit-2025-dr.-jana-schmidt-naturopathic-pearls-the-importance-of-.html

Freedom Summit 2025 | Dr. Jana Schmidt | Naturopathic Pearls: The Importance of a Firm Foundation: https://rumble.com/v6zwpze-freedom-summit-2025-dr.-jana-schmidt-naturopathic-pearls-the-importance-of-.html

Reverse osmosis water

The best way to remove aluminium ions from drinking water is reverse osmosis. I used to buy revese osmosis water from a neighboring town mainly because that town did not add flouride (also a strong neurotoxin) to the water. Some supermarkets have stations where you can buy reverse osmosis water and fill up your own containers. I was well aware that water filtration is a somewhat fraudulent industry. Many filtration systems fall short of their promises and that is why I drove to the neighboring town because if there is no flouride in the tap water then it will also not be in the filtered water even if the filtration system is malfunctioning.

I discovered recently that it is possible to buy aluminium test kits. I ordered one on aliexpress and it works perfectly. The name is "aluminium test kit" but it really tests for Al³⁺ ions in water.

aluminium test kit: this kit tests for Al³⁺ ions in the water

Since all municipal tap water is contaminated with aluminium we can use an aluminium test kit to find out if a reverse osmosis filtration system is working or not. The supermarket where I bought the water has two stations. The left one works while the right one is a fraud.

Reverse osmosis filtration systems as a local supermarket. The system on the right is broken.

The system on the right has a defect reverse osmosis stage. The company that runs these stations, primowater.com, was recently bought by the US company known as water.com. I contacted them and told them that only one of the station in this supermarket actually works. No response. They know that most customers will not be able to tell the difference.

The Chris Exley trick to bind the aluminium ions

Dr. Chris Exley discovered how nature removes aluminium ions from biology. Silica water binds to aluminium ions and converts them into biologically inactive aluminium silicates. He has written a book about this and he maintains a substack at https://drchristopherexley.substack.com.

Let's try the Chris Exley trick. We mix tap water with 10% Fiji water. Wait a few minutes and then test the water for aluminium ions using the above aluminium test kit. It removes all the aluminium ions:

No aluminium ions found: tap water + 10% fiji water

Below is what normal tap water looked like on this day (the aluminium ion concentration is dependent on what they do at the water plant and it changes over time):

pure tap water: an aluminium concentration of 60μg/l

You can use fiji water or evian water to remove aluminium from your body. I am not so sure if silica rich water prevents also the absorbtion of aluminium into the body. If you add an acid (such as HCl) to "tap water + 10% fiji water" then that converts the aluminium silicates back into aluminium ions. This is the main reason why acid rain was killing trees and salmon fish in streams in the 1980s. I think the following will happen when you drink tap water + 10% fiji water: The stomach acid will convert the aluminium silicates back into ions but later in the digestion process or in the blood stream the silicilic acid from the fiji water will again bind the aluminium ions. There is however a priod where aluminium ions are present and I am not sure about the overall impact.

Silica rich waters are an excellent option for removing aluminium that has already accumulated in the body. Aluminum primarily binds to transferrin (a blood component). It is slowly taken up by tissues and organs and accumulates primarily in bone and to a lesser degree in the brain. Silica rich waters are the best way to detox from aluminium. The silica binds the aluminium and it gets excreted via the kidneys.

Removing aluminium ions with baking soda

Al³⁺ ions react readily with bicarbonate ions (HC0₃^-) and form Al(OH)₃ (aluminum hydroxide). Aluminum hydroxide is insoluble in water and can be removed to a large degree with a coffee filter. Aluminum hydroxide would convert back into to Al³⁺ ions in the presence of an acid such as HCl but once it is filtered out it is no longer there.

In other words if you don't mind the taste of soda water then you can add a small amount of baking soda to tap water (e.g 1/4 tea spoon per liter), let it react for about 1 hour and then filter it through a coffee filter.

Reverse osmosis removes all minerals from the water. This method keeps other potentially beneficial minerals.

Other common sources of aluminium ions

Damaged coating (or no coating at all) on aluminium cook-ware.
The heating plate of many coffee machines is made from aluminium. It's not only the glass pot that sits on that plate but the water runs through this plate in order to heat it.
Some antacids (aluminum hydroxide tablets) medications contain very high levels of aluminum.
Some baking powder mixtures contain aluminium salts.
Beverage cans are made from aluminium and many soft drinks are acidic. This causes the aluminum to leach into the drink.
Vaccine adjutants. Vaccines contain small amounts compared to what you consume via tap water but vaccines are directly injected into the body bypassing the gut barrier membranes.
Some silver looking packaging foils are coated with a plastic layer to prevent the aluminium from leaching into food but often it is just plain aluminium foil.

Summary and references

Aluminium ions are a poison and nature has worked out ways to keep them out of biology. Alzheimer's started to become a common problem after humans found a way to convert the biologically inert aluminium oxides and silicates back into aluminium metal and aluminium ions (Al³⁺).
All municipal water contains toxic aluminium ions because the water plant adds them to "clean the water" (the aluminium ions poison all life in the water and cause the resulting debris to clump together). Water plants add aluminium ions but have no way to remove them.
You can test water for aluminium ions if you want to know if a reverse osmosis filter is actually working. There should be no aluminium ions after the reverse osmosis stage.
Silica rich waters such as fiji water can be used to bind aluminium ions inside the body. It's the only effective way to remove aluminium ions. Some people have halted Alzheimer's or reveresed it by drinking daily some silica rich water.
I believe that a barrier dysfunction at the gut and the blood-brain barrier level starts the process and it's the reason why some people get Alzheimer's and others not. I have see this in my own family. So if you want to reverse dementia then you need to work on multiple fronts at the same time:
1. Ensure that cellular energy production is working properly (e.g check for vitamin B12 deficiency, make sure the body can produce enough EZ-water by ensuring you get enought sunshine)
2. Fix chronic disease and inflammation (e.g lyme disease or diabetes) as inflamation damages cell level barriers.
3. Restore the gut microbiome and stop a "leaky gut". A "leaky gut" increases the aluminium uptake.
4. Get rid of all aluminium in the body by using silica rich water.
5. Restore zeta potential (fix magnesium and potassium deficiency).

The unbecomming substack published an excellent summary on the same subject just as I was finishing this article:

https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/alzheimers-disease-understanding, Alzheimer's Disease: Understanding the Controversy, Causes, and Cures, (local pdf copy)

Dr. Chris Exley has researched aluminium over many years and he writes a substack at:

https://drchristopherexley.substack.com.

Aluminium in Brain Tissue is also associated with Multiple Sclerosis. MS patients have seen improvements when removing aluminium form their body:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30126209/ and https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-3964(17)30428-0/fulltext