Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has often trained his criticisms of vaccines on a common ingredient: aluminum, which he has suggested is responsible for a litany of childhood ailments, including food allergies, autism and depression.
“You wonder why a whole generation of children is allergic to stuff,” Mr. Kennedy said during a 2021 interview. “It’s because we’re inducing allergies, pumping them full of aluminum.”
To many vaccine scientists, aluminum is a strange target. It is among the most studied ingredients in vaccines, and perhaps in modern medicine.
“There’s a huge amount of information that’s gathered,” said Dr. Andrew Racine, a pediatrician and chief medical officer at the Montefiore Health System. “If there was something jumping out about a lack of safety, we would most likely have seen it someplace, and it just doesn’t appear.”
Aaron Siri, a lawyer and close ally of Mr. Kennedy, has represented clients in petitioning federal regulators to pause the distribution of more than a dozen vaccines until the makers provided more information about the amount of aluminum in the formulations.
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Today, aluminum adjuvants are found in 27 routine vaccines, and nearly half of those recommended for children under 5.
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The amount of aluminum in childhood vaccines, however, is trivial compared with what people are routinely exposed to via the environment and food, said Dr. Tony Moody, director of the Duke CIVICs Vaccine Center.
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In the first six months of babies’ lives, vaccines expose them to roughly 4.4 milligrams of aluminum. One slice of American cheese, by contrast, can contain as much as 50 milligrams of aluminum.
