Keele Research Repository

The possible role of aluminium in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been hotly debated over the past few decades. Although the so‐called ‘aluminium hypothesis’ was popular in the 1970s and 1980s, it has gradually fallen out of favour in the past few years possibly following a number of inconclusive and contradictory human environmental/clinical studies. Nevertheless, there have from time to time been reminders in the media of environmental accidents; these have prevented the topic from disappearing completely from public memory. One such accident occurred on July 6th 1988 in Camelford, Cornwall when 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate was mistakenly discharged into the mains water supply. Twenty thousand people were exposed to concentrations of aluminium which were 500–3000 times the acceptable limit under European Union legislation. Over the subsequent years there have been UK government inquiries into the supposed environmental impact and occasional clinical follow‐up studies documenting declining cerebral function in those exposed to the contaminated water but very little neuropathological data has been published. To our knowledge, the case described here is only the second neuropathological description.