19

The development of aluminium has been accompanied by major crises and controversies, especially in the field of food applications. Because alumina contaminates food and aluminium salts are used as food additives, the issue of safety, raised as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century for its oxide, is inherent to its history. Its use in baking powder in the United States triggered the most important scientific controversy of its time. Two other controversies occurred in Europe, between the end of the 19th century and the 1930s. All raised an essential question: how does this metal migrate into the tissues and organs of human beings? Scientific debates and research were quickly influenced and restrained by various interventions by people from the industry and civil society was still not very active.