Effect of Alginate on the Absorption of Lead in Man

Abstract

EXPERIMENTS carried out in this laboratory have shown that adding an alginate derivative rich in guluronic acid to the diet of man, in the proportion of 10 g of alginate to 1 g of dietary calcium, reduces the absorption of strontium, and therefore strontium-90, by a factor of four¹. Indeed, for a milk diet, the corresponding decrease was about six-fold², and, in these conditions, the absorption of calcium was decreased only by a few per cent. Ideally, an alginate supplement should suppress the absorption of strontium without affecting the absorption of essential elements, and it has been shown that there was no reduction in the absorption of Na, K, Ca, Mg, Fe or Zn or in the body retention of P (ref. 3) in rats fed for a year on a commercial diet containing 10 per cent of commercial alginate (Manucol SS/LD/2, Alginate Industries, Ltd).