[The use of aluminum-containing toothpaste and its potential risk].

Epidemiological studies from Norway and England suggest that there is a relation between the frequency of Alzheimer's disease and the concentration of aluminum in the drinking water. A recent Dutch study suggests further that the role of aluminum from tooth pastes may be even more important than that from drinking water. For this reason we determined in samples from the Belgian market which tooth pastes contained aluminium oxyhydroxide as abrasive. This happened to be the case in 5 out of 27 brands. It is not know to us which part of the market these tooth pastes represent.