No, vaccines do not contain unsafe amounts of aluminum for infants, research shows

An Instagram video warns that vaccinated infants face the threat of death from unsafe levels of aluminum. 

The Jan. 16 video showed an infant hooked to wires as what appears to be a news headline flashes on the screen: "Baby who died 34 hours after vaccines had toxic level of aluminum in his blood, report confirms," the headline read.

The video also showed an image of a Vitamin K injectable label that says it contains 110 micrograms of aluminum per liter.

"Vitamin K at birth is not a vitamin," another sticker on the video warns. The post’s caption included a list of vaccines along with aluminum levels that it asserted exceed what children can safely receive.

The Instagram post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Research has found no link between vaccines and aluminum poisoning in infants.

The headline featured in the video comes from a Sept. 14 article in The Defender, a publication of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group founded by 2024 independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose campaign built on vaccine-related conspiracy theories was named PolitiFact’s 2023 Lie of the Year.

The article tells the story of an 8-week-old boy who died in 2022 from what a Maine medical examiner said was "asphyxiation due to inappropriate sleep position and environment." The infant’s parents doubted the report and sought further testing, which revealed high levels of aluminum in the baby’s bloodstream that the parents believed was because of vaccines the baby received 34 hours before dying. 

The parents planned to file a report in the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System database about the baby’s death, the story said. They were also planning to seek compensation through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

Aluminum is the third most abundant element in the Earth’s crust. Humans are constantly exposed to aluminum through food, water, baby formula and even the air. 

Small amounts have been used in vaccines for more than 70 years as an adjuvant — an ingredient that helps create a stronger immune response. A 2021 scientific article said multiple high-quality studies have shown that children who receive vaccines with aluminum adjuvants do not have dangerous levels of aluminum in their blood.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Code of Federal Regulations states that "aluminum in an individual dose of a biological product" should not exceed 0.85 milligrams.

We reviewed the vaccines listed in the post’s caption and checked them against information contained in vaccines’ package inserts. We found none of the vaccines listed had more than 0.85 milligrams of aluminum, the limit the USDA has deemed safe.

A report reviewed by Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said infants receive more aluminum in their diets in the first six months of life than what they would receive from vaccines administered during the same period. Vaccines administered to babies within the first six months contain an estimated 4.4 milligrams of aluminum while breast milk over six months contains about 7 milligrams and formula in that time frame contains 38 milligrams. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that average American adults consume 7 to 9 milligrams of aluminum per day from food alone.

We rate the claim that vaccines have unsafe levels of aluminum for infants False.