aluminium

Health officials in the United States are reviewing whether to remove aluminium from some common vaccines, as part of the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on vaccines.

The Department of Health and Human Services has reduced some vaccine access. The agency scaled back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, approved COVID-19 vaccines for fewer people and aimed to remove the preservative thimerosal from US vaccines. Experts told PolitiFact scientific research did not support its removal.

During a September 22 news conference, in which US President Donald Trump told people not to take Tylenol during pregnancy, he also mentioned another objective. “We want no aluminium in the vaccine,” he said. The administration was already in the process of removing aluminium from vaccines, he added.

About two weeks later, on October 8, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, announced a new working group focused on the childhood vaccine schedule. Its discussion topics include vaccine ingredient safety and aluminium adjuvants.

Robert Malone, an ACIP member who has opposed COVID-19 vaccines, told Axios he expected the ACIP would determine there was “a lot of evidence” of “issues” with aluminium in vaccines. The committee would likely vote to re-categorise vaccines containing aluminium adjuvants so that people would have to discuss with their doctor before getting them, Malone told Axios.

That could have far-reaching ramifications. Here’s what to know about aluminium in vaccines.

A: Small amounts of aluminium are sometimes included in vaccines as adjuvants, or substances that boost the body’s immune response to the vaccine to ensure protection from infection.

That boost means people can get fewer vaccine doses in smaller quantities.

Q: When used, how much aluminium is in a vaccine?

A: Vaccines with aluminium adjuvants usually contain less than 1mg aluminium per dose, according to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

That is a pretty abstract number. To help make it more concrete: a milligram is one-thousandth (1/1,000th) of 1g. One gram is about the weight of a raisin or a stick of gum. Imagine cutting one of those items into 1,000 equal pieces. One of the pieces would be about 1mg.

Here is another way to think about it.

People come in contact with and consume aluminium all of the time. It is one of the most abundant metal elements in the Earth’s crust, according to the US Geological Survey. It is naturally occurring in soil, air and water. Food is the main way people are exposed to aluminium. The average adult eats 7mg to 9mg of aluminium per day, according to the CDC.

A baby in its first six months might receive a total of about 4.4mg of aluminium from recommended vaccines. In the same period of time, a breastfed infant would ingest about 7mg of aluminium from breastmilk, and a formula-fed baby would ingest about 38mg from formula.

Q: How long have vaccines contained aluminium?

A: Aluminium adjuvants have been used in vaccines for more than 70 years, the CDC said.

“Aluminium is one of our oldest adjuvants; it’s been used in vaccines since the 1920s,” said Dr Peter Hotez, a Baylor College of Medicine professor and codirector of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

Q: How do we know it’s safe to include small amounts of aluminium in vaccines?

A: Every vaccine’s safety and efficacy are tested in animal studies and human clinical trials before the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licenses it for public use. Every vaccine containing adjuvants has been tested, and health agencies continuously monitor their safety, the CDC said.

Over several decades of use, vaccines with aluminium adjuvants have been proven safe, the FDA said.

Vaccines containing aluminium have been “given to billions of people worldwide now”, said Dr Kawsar Talaat, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

A growing body of research has also found that aluminium adjuvants do not cause aluminium toxicity or other adverse outcomes.

Q: Do aluminium adjuvants have any risks?

A: Rarely, some people have allergic reactions to aluminium in the same way they might have allergic reactions to other substances, Talaat said.

In 2022, researchers published a retrospective, observational study on more than 325,000 children that found an association between vaccine-related aluminium exposure and persistent asthma. Association is not the same as causation, meaning the study did not prove a link between aluminium in vaccines and asthma.

Experts from the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics encouraged more research on the subject because the backwards-looking observational study did not prove causation and also had limitations, including that it excluded many children who developed asthma before they turned two years old.

A 2025 study found no increased risk of asthma associated with childhood exposure to aluminium-absorbed vaccines.

Q: Which vaccines contain aluminium adjuvants?

A: At least 25 vaccines approved for use in the US have aluminium adjuvants, the CDC says. That includes vaccines that protect against HPV, hepatitis A and B and diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis (whooping cough).

Q: Which vaccines do not contain aluminium adjuvants?

The CDC’s list of vaccines without adjuvants includes vaccines against COVID-19, Ebola, meningococcal, polio and rabies. Additionally, most seasonal flu shots and the vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella do not contain aluminium adjuvants.

Q: Can we remove aluminium from vaccines?

A: Not quickly. If it could be done at all, it would take years to develop, test and license new, aluminium-free vaccines. Many of the vaccines with aluminium adjuvants do not have aluminium-free formulas.

“A vaccine is licensed based on all of its ingredients and the exact manufacturing process,” Talaat said. “If you were to take an ingredient out of a vaccine, you would have to start all over with the clinical trials and the manufacturing, and it is highly possible that some of these vaccines wouldn’t work without the aluminium in there.”

Although other adjuvants exist, they are newer and often more scarce than aluminium, which is abundant.

An immediate ban on aluminium in vaccines would drastically reduce people’s ability to protect themselves and others against numerous diseases.

“I think we’d see outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases,” Talaat said.

Q: Why do people think aluminium in vaccines is causing autism?

A: A 2011 study said vaccines with aluminium adjuvants “may be a significant” contributing factor to the rising number of autism diagnoses in kids, Nature reported.

A year later, a World Health Organization vaccine safety committee called the 2011 study “seriously flawed”. The 2011 study and another by the same authors compared vaccines’ aluminium content and autism rates in several countries, the WHO group said, but that cannot be used to establish a causal relationship.

“We studied aluminium, and have no link between aluminium and autism,” Talaat said.

Published on
28/08/2025 – 7:45 GMT+2

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The EU should speed negotiation of a tariff-rate quota (TRQ) system with the US to avoid existing exorbitant tariffs of 50% on steel and aluminium, the director general of the European Steel Association, EUROFER, has told Euronews adding that such a deal could also help with cooperation on Chinese overcapacities in the sector.

Such TRQ systems enable specific quantities of steel and aluminium to be imported at a lower or zero tariff rate, with any additional amount subject to a much higher tariff rate.

“Tariff-rate quotas are the only opening we have with the US,” Axel Eggert told Euronews, adding: “They are not perfect, but at least we still can export to the US, whereas now it’s completely different.”

The tariff-rate quota system for steel and aluminium was introduced under the Biden administration to replace the 25% tariffs on steel and 10% on aluminium imposed by the first Trump administration. It allowed up to 3.3 million tons of EU steel and 384,000 tons of aluminium into the US tariff-free, with the tariffs applying to any further amounts. However, since his return to office, US President Donald Trump has imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium, which were raised to 50% in June and extended on 19 August to some 400 steel derivatives.

After weeks of tariff disputes targeting all EU industrial products—not just steel and aluminium—the US and the EU reached an agreement setting tariffs on EU goods at 15%, with the notable exception of steel and aluminium.

However, the joint statement does state that the parties “intend to consider the possibility to cooperate on ring-fencing their respective domestic markets from overcapacity, while ensuring secure supply chains between each other, including through tariff-rate quota solutions.”

“We would have hoped that there was a clear obligation for the US to keep the tariff-rate quota which we had before,” Eggert said. “That was our objective and that was also the Commission’s objective, but the Commission simply didn’t get it.”

EUROFER’s boss also said that the US and EU can make common cause in fighting Chinese overcapacities in the steel sector.

According to OECD figures, there was a global overcapacity of steel of 600 million tons last year, and by next year there should be overcapacities of 720 million tonnes.

“China is subsidising its steel industry,” Eggert said, pointing out that the Asian giant has an excess capacity of more than 500 million tons.

When Trump imposed 25% tariffs on global steel and aluminium in March, it was swallowed by cheap Chinese products, he added, which explains why the US tariffs were then raised to 50%.

The issue of overcapacity was an integral part of the negotiations in recent months between the US and the EU, with the Commission pushing for cooperation between the two sides.

“If you have the two biggest markets in the world, the US and the EU, then you have such market power that you don’t let in any steam from companies which produce overcapacity,” Eggert predicts. “Then of course they have to reduce the overcapacities.”

In 2021, the Biden administration and the EU Commission started negotiating an agreement — the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminium (GASSA) — to fight overcapacities and promote lower-carbon production in the steel and aluminium sectors. But the negotiation was interrupted after Trump returned to power.

“There is a possibility [to bring it back], because the US administration has worked this out in great detail already,” Eggert said, pointing out that one sticking point which remained was the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which imposes a fee on some polluting goods imported into the EU, which the US opposes.

New US tariffs covering 407 products will take effect immediately.

The United States Commerce Department is set to hike steel and aluminium tariffs on more than 400 products including wind turbines, mobile cranes, bulldozers and other heavy equipment, along with railcars, furniture and hundreds of other products.

The government agency announced the new development on Tuesday.

The department said 407 product categories are being added to the list of “derivative” steel and aluminium products covered by sectoral tariffs, with a 50 percent tariff on any steel and aluminium content of these products.

The department is also adding imported parts for automotive exhaust systems and electrical steel needed for electric vehicles to the new tariffs.

A group of foreign automakers had urged the department not to add the parts, saying the US does not have the domestic capacity to handle current demand.

The new tariffs take effect immediately and also cover compressors and pumps.

“Today’s action expands the reach of the steel and aluminum tariffs and shuts down avenues for circumvention – supporting the continued revitalisation of the American steel and aluminum industries,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Jeffrey Kessler.

Steelmakers including Cleveland-Cliffs had petitioned the administration to expand the tariffs to include additional steel and aluminium auto parts.

Since returning to the presidency, Trump has imposed a 10 percent tariff on almost all US trading partners, alongside varying steeper levels on dozens of economies such as the European Union and Japan.

Certain sectors have been spared from these countrywide tariff levels, but instead were targeted under different authorities by even higher duties.

Some businesses have already had to raise prices because of increased tariffs. On Tuesday, on the heels of its earnings report, Home Depot said it would need to raise prices on imported goods that it sells.

“There will be modest price movement in some categories,” Home Depot Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail said on a Tuesday conference call.

Other brands that have recently announced price increases include the world’s largest consumer goods company, Procter and Gamble, which last month said it would need to raise prices on a quarter of the goods it produces.

Mexico says tariffs make ‘no sense’ as Canada seeks negotiations to remove the levies ongoing.

In a move that has reignited trade tensions with key allies, United States President Donald Trump has doubled tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

The new rates, which came into effect early on Wednesday, raise duties from 25 percent to 50 percent. Trump says the measure is designed to bolster the struggling US metals sector.

“We started at 25 and then, after studying the data more, realised that it was a big help, but more help is needed. And so that is why the 50 [percent tariff] is starting tomorrow,” said White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett during a steel industry event in Washington on Tuesday.

The executive order applies to all trading partners except the United Kingdom, which has reached a provisional trade deal with Washington during a 90-day pause on broader tariffs.

British exports will continue to face a 25 percent rate until at least July 9.

Allies seek exemptions

The hike is expected to weigh heavily on Canada and Mexico, two of the US’s closest economic allies and among the largest suppliers of steel. Census Bureau data shows Canada alone exports more aluminium to the US than the rest of the top 10 countries combined. Almost half of the US aluminium consumption is imported.

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office confirmed that “intensive and live negotiations” were ongoing to remove the tariffs.

Mexico’s Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard slammed the decision as irrational, noting the imbalance in steel trade between the two nations.

“It makes no sense for the United States to levy a tariff on a product in which you have a surplus,” he said, adding that Mexico would seek an exemption.

The European Union criticised the decision, saying it “strongly regrets” the move and warned it could take retaliatory action, accusing Washington of undermining attempts at a negotiated settlement.

OECD chief economist Alvaro Pereira told the AFP news agency that the tariffs have already dampened global trade, investment and consumption, and that the US will bear the brunt of the fallout.

While several of Trump’s tariff measures face legal scrutiny, they remain in force during the appeals process.