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aluminum
Alysoun McLaughlin wrote (a few days back):
>
[snip]
> However, to my untrained eye, it seemed as though there was a very high
> level of aluminum (i.e., it was the biggest number in that column).
>
> A chemistry-literate friend speculated that this could be the reason my
> water is so darned well buffered (7.5 from the tap, and boiling peat
> doesn't even get us very low, so we've started adding distilled water to
> our apisto breeding tanks).
>
> Does this make sense, and what particular problems or benefits might
> result from a high level of aluminum?
>
My ISP had a security problem, and while they work out all their bugs
I'm forced to use an unfamiliar mail client, so I hope this comes
through without too much annoyance.
The first thing to do when you get a new copy of the report is to check
the units used to measure the aluminum concentration. Possibly it is
reported in micrograms per liter (or parts per billion) while the other
values nearby are in milligrams per liter or parts per million. One
part per billion is a thousand times smaller than one part per million.
It's unusual to see high aluminum concentrations in water, and it's
virtually impossible for high levels of aluminum to be dissolved in
water with a pH so high. Most aluminum measured in water samples comes
from colloids and clay minerals, rather than being dissolved in the
water and its sometimes very difficult to filter a sample so that all of
that aluminum is removed before it's analysed.
The association between aluminum and alzheimer's as I recall was for
aluminum *in the brain*, not in water. I don't think anyone's come up
with a correlation between alzheimer's and environmental aluminum
exposure.
Aluminum won't contribute to buffer capacity. It's concentrations are
simply too low.
Roger Miller