smoking tin foil

[orbsycli]

there is an urban legend amongst the universal community of pot-heads that says smoking tin foil leads to alzheimers.

me, being the hypographer that i am, wondered about this.
i was wondering where the proof of this is, and/or could someone please further explain how this works to me?

[zadojla]

Interesting. Since "tinfoil" is really aluminum, could this be related to the urban legend that cooking in aluminum pots leads to Alzheimer's?

[orbsycli]

must be. does anybody know anything about this?

[Turtle]

___Let's call the Mythbusters guys! I watched then shoot a 50 caliber rifle into a pool tonight to see how far in the water the bullet went! It disintegrated within about 2 feet of penetration.
Smoking in metal,
never is good,
no matter the load,
clay , glass, or wood!

[orbsycli]

i prefer glass. but that's off the subject. i'd really like to see some proof, or even where this myth was derived from.

[Turtle]

___The proof is in the taste if nothing else. Metal tastes bad smoking in it, so to me it is bad to smoke in.

[orbsycli]

good point. since smoking anything in general is bad for you anyways, you should just find what feels less bad. which also means good, if you don't want to get technical.
i just smoked out of wood and it is such a humble feeling.
i don't know what else to say. biochemist, do you know anything? you always give me really thorough answers, and i appreciate that.
and turtle, brotherly conductive creatively. always.
peace.

[Boerseun]

Research has shown that people suffering from Alzheimer's have a generally higher aluminium content in their brains than healthy people of the same age group.

This could have lead to the stories about aluminium pots.

Myself, I don't know - rather safe than sorry...

[adjective]

Straight from the horse's mouth (or at least the first horse I found): "As evidence for other causes continues to grow, a possible link with aluminium seems increasingly unlikely." [http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/Facts_a...aluminium.htm]

Also: "It has been suggested that aluminium may be linked to Alzheimer's disease, although that research has recently been refuted; aluminium accumulation may be a consequence of the Alzheimer's damage, not the cause. In any event, if there is any toxicity of aluminium it must be via a very specific mechanism, since total human exposure to the element in the form of naturally occurring clay in soil and dust is enormously large over a lifetime." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminum]

To me, the last sentence of the wikipedia excerpt seems particularly damaging to the hypothesis. However, aluminum is rarely found in its pure form in nature, so it could be that aluminum compounds are harmless and that raw aluminum, released through chemical and physical processes into our consumable goods, is not so harmless.

I have to wonder, though, why anyone would be smoking out of aluminum foil to begin with? Just buy some rolling papers. Sheesh.

[infamous]

Originally Posted by zadojla

Interesting. Since "tinfoil" is really aluminum, could this be related to the urban legend that cooking in aluminum pots leads to Alzheimer's?

This is more than an urban legend, I recently viewed a program on a TV special that affirmed this to be a real consequence of injesting aluminum compounds.