Melamine Tainted Milk Powder Still Being Stockpiled in China
Filed under: Caution with these Foods, Children Products Recalled, china, China Product Safety, Dangerous Foods, Effects of Melamine, Melamine, Product Recalls, Recall, Recalled Foods, U.S.A and Melamine Scare, What it is?
China was fighting to maintain public confidence in its food safety after a massive stockpile of melamine-tainted milk powder was seized during raids on warehouses in the nation’s biggest city.
The seizures in Chongqing come three years after the 2008 Sanlu milk scandal, in which three babies died and 300,000 others were sickened by melamine-tainted milk in an episode that fatally undermined already fragile public trust in the government’s ability to keep food safe.
The discovery of the tainted milk powder, which was due to be made into pastry and ice-cream, has drawn attention to the inability of China’s government to police China’s vast and fragmented food chain.
In a bid to restore confidence, the city authorities in Chongqing, a municipal area with 35m inhabitants, have announced a 100-day crackdown on food and drug fraud in a mirror-image of a crackdown last year on mafia crime.
On Monday some 7,900 police in Chongqing were reportedly deployed to conduct city-wide raids on 600 premises suspected of producing illegal or fake food and pharmaceuticals.
Perfluoroalkyls, which are chemicals used to keep grease from leaking through fast food wrappers, are being ingested by people through their food and showing up as contaminants in blood.
Filed under: Caution with these Foods, Is it Safe?, Perfluoroalkyls, What it is?
Dangerous chemicals leak into blood from packaging
Perfluoroalkyls, which are chemicals used to keep grease from leaking through fast food wrappers, are being ingested by people through their food and showing up as contaminants in blood.
Perfluoroalkyls are stable, synthetic chemicals that repel oil, grease, and water. They are used in surface protection treatments and coatings for packages.
The specific chemicals studied were polyfluoroalkyl phosphate esters (PAPs), which are the breakdown products of the perfluorinated carboxylic acids used in coating the food wrappers.
Common Dreams reports:
“The researchers used the PAP concentrations previously observed in human blood together with the PAP and PFCA concentrations observed in the rats to calculate human exposure to the chemical perflurooctanoic acid, PFOA.”
Sources:
Food Fraud- Food that is not what it says, FDA needs to crack down
Filed under: Banned Foods Trivia, Is it Safe?, Labeling and Labels, What it is?
Is your food what it says?
The expensive “sheep’s milk” cheese in a Manhattan market was really made from cow’s milk. And a jar of “Sturgeon caviar” was, in fact, Mississippi paddlefish.
Some honey makers dilute their honey with sugar beets or corn syrup, their competitors say, but still market it as 100 percent pure at a premium price.
And last year, a Fairfax man was convicted of selling 10 million pounds of cheap, frozen catfish fillets from Vietnam as much more expensive grouper, red snapper and flounder. The fish was bought by national chain retailers, wholesalers and food service companies, and ended up on dinner plates across the country.
“Food fraud” has been documented in fruit juice, olive oil, spices, vinegar, wine, spirits and maple syrup, and appears to pose a significant problem in the seafood industry. Victims range from the shopper at the local supermarket to multimillion companies, including E&J Gallo and Heinz USA.
Such deception has been happening since Roman times, but it is getting new attention as more products are imported and a tight economy heightens competition. And the U.S. food industry says federal regulators are not doing enough to combat it.
“It’s growing very rapidly, and there’s more of it than you might think,” said James Morehouse, a senior partner at A.T. Kearney Inc., which is studying the issue for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the food and beverage industry.
John Spink, an expert on food and packaging fraud at Michigan State University, estimates that 5 to 7 percent of the U.S. food supply is affected but acknowledges the number could be greater. “We know what we seized at the border, but we have no idea what we didn’t seize,” he said.
The job of ensuring that food is accurately labeled largely rests with the Food and Drug Administration. But it has been overwhelmed in trying to prevent food contamination, and fraud has remained on a back burner.
The recent development of high-tech tools — including DNA testing — has made it easier to detect fraud that might have gone unnoticed a decade ago. DNA can be extracted from cells of fish and meat and from other foods, such as rice and even coffee. Technicians then identify the species by comparing the DNA to a database of samples.
Another tool, isotope ratio analysis, can determine subtle differences between food — whether a fish was farmed or wild, for example, or whether caviar came from Finland or a U.S. stream.
The techniques have become so accessible that two New York City high school students, working with scientists at the Rockefeller University and the American Museum of Natural History last year, discovered after analyzing DNA in 11 of 66 foods — including the sheep’s milk cheese and caviar — bought randomly at markets in Manhattan were mislabeled.
“We put so much emphasis on food and purity of ingredients and where they come from,” said Mark Stoeckle, a physician and DNA expert at Rockefeller University who advised the students. “But then there are things selling that are not what they say on the label. There’s an important issue here in terms of economics and consumer safety.”
It is not clear how many food manufacturers, importers and retailers are testing products, but large companies with valuable brands to protect have been increasingly using the new technology, said Vincent Paez, director of food safety business development at Thermo Fisher Scientific, which sells some of the equipment and performs laboratory analysis, including DNA testing.
Still, of the hundreds of customers who bought 10 million pounds of mislabeled Vietnamese catfish — including national chains and top rated restaurants — only one or two caught the deception, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Johns, who prosecuted the Fairfax fish importer. “It was the rare exception, not the norm,” he said.
Heinz USA and Kraft Foods, two giant food makers with well- established internal controls, nevertheless fell victim to “Operation Rotten Tomato,” a conspiracy in which the scion of a California farming dynasty was indicted this month. He was accused of disguising millions of pounds of moldy tomato paste as a higher- grade product and selling it to foodmakers.
And E&J Gallo, the nation’s largest wine seller, sold 18 million bottles of Red Bicyclette Pinot Noir between 2006 and 2008 that had been filled in France with wine made from cheaper merlot and syrah grapes, according to a French court that last month indicted a dozen of its citizens in a scam dubbed Pinotgate.
At the FDA’s first public meeting on food fraud last year, groups across the industry complained that it is not doing enough.
“If it’s not going to hurt or kill someone, FDA’s resources are limited enough that they can’t take time to address it,” said Bob Bauer, a spokesman for the National Honey Packers & Dealers Association and the North American Olive Oil Association.
Both groups have petitioned the FDA to set standards for honey and olive oil, which would make it possible for companies to sue competitors that sell an adulterated product. The olive oil industry has been waiting for FDA to act on its request since 1991; major honey and beekeeping groups have been waiting since 2006. An agency spokesman said those requests are pending.
One longtime crabmeat seller on the Chesapeake Bay said he has complained, without results, to the FDA for years about a competitor who imports cheap crab and repackages it as Chesapeake blue crab, a different species that can be sold for twice or three times the price.
The National Seafood Inspection Laboratory, part of the Marine Fisheries Service, randomly sampled seafood from vendors between 1988 and 1997; it found that 34 percent had been mislabeled and sold as a different species. In 2004, scientists at the University of North Carolina estimated that 77 percent of snapper sold in the United States is mislabeled.
“With the recession, people are trying to make money in any way, shape or form,” said William Gergits, a co-founder of Therion International LLC, which specializes in DNA-based testing services. “Southeast grouper and red snapper fisheries here are limited. If you think about all the restaurants in Florida, there’s not enough supply to go to those restaurants.”
Despite growing imports, the FDA inspects just 2 percent of fish coming into the United States from other countries.
The agency wants to create a surveillance system that would alert regulators to likely fraud, said Jennifer Thomas, director of enforcement at FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. She said the FDA regularly swaps intelligence with two other agencies that share responsibility for catching seafood fraud. It has also bought a $170,000 DNA sequencer for its Seattle field office.
She pointed to several FDA actions against food fraud in recent months, including the first debarment of a seafood importer, suggesting that may be a deterrent.
Peter Xuong Lam, president of Virginia Star Seafood Corporation of Fairfax, was convicted last year of selling the mislabeled catfish. Ten other individuals and companies were also charged. Lam was sentenced to five years in prison and is barred from importing food into the United States for the next 20 years.
Authentification should be a standard practice throughout the food industry, Stoeckle said: “If it’s simple enough that high school students with some supervision can do it, it moves out of the research application to something you can do regularly.”
Deceptive Labeling Practices gets called out by FDA-Can you trust labels?
Filed under: Is it Safe?, Labeling and Labels, Tips on Food Safety, What it is?
In a move called “unprecedented” by watchdog agency Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued warning letters to 17 food companies about their deceptive labeling practices.
Basically, the companies receiving these letters did one of two things wrong. Let me present these two issues and give a few examples for each and then tell you what I think about all of this.
Issue #1: The product label bears a nutrient content claim but does not meet the requirements to make the claim. Specifically if the product package includes the claim “0 grams trans fat” and the product contains more than 13 grams of total fat, 4 grams of saturated fat or 480 mg of sodium per labeled serving, it must include a disclosure statement on the label, adjacent to the claim, referring the consumer to nutrition information for those nutrients.
Here are a few examples:
* Gorton’s Beer Batter Crispy Battered Fish Fillet: They make the “0 grams trans fat” claim without a disclosure statement when a serving of the product contains 19 g total fat, 4.5 g saturated fat and 680 mg sodium per serving.
* Dreyer’s Nestle Drumstick Classic Vanilla Fudge and Dreyer’s Dibs Bite Size Ice Cream Snacks Vanilla Ice Cream with Nestle Crunch Coating: The package label states “O grams trans Fat” but the products contain 19 grams total fat; 10 grams saturated fat (Drumstick) and 28 grams total fat, 20 grams saturated fat (Dibs).
* Spectrum Organic All Vegetable Shortening: This product doesn’t meet the requirement for the use of the term “cholesterol free” on its label because the product contains 6 grams of saturated fat per tablespoon (it exceeds the limit of 2 grams or less saturated fat per Reference Amount Customarily Consumed)… and it doesn’t comply with the requirements for making the claim “less saturated fat than butter.”
Issue #2: The therapeutic claims on their website established that the product is a drug because it is intended for use in the cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease.
* *Salada Naturally Decaf Green Tea (Redco Foods): Their website promotes their tea products for conditions that cause them to be drugs under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. For example, they make the statement that green tea can inhibit the cancer process and regulate cholesterol levels.
* Diamond of California Shelled Walnuts: Again, the FDA determined, based on claims made on their website, that their walnuts products are promoted for conditions that cause them to be drugs. Here are some of the statements made on their website that FDA mentioned specifically:
o “Studies indicate that the omega-3 fatty acids found in walnuts may help lower cholesterol; protect against heart disease, stroke and some cancers; ease arthritis and other inflammatory diseases; and even fight depression and other mental illnesses.”
o “In treating major depression, for example, omega-3s seem to work by making it easier for brain cell receptors to process mood-related signals from neighboring
neurons.”
o “There’s good evidence that omega-3s can increase HDL (good cholesterol), further reducing the risk of stroke and heart disease.”
So what do I think about all of this? I totally understand FDA going after processed food products like frozen desserts or breaded fish fillets boasting “0 grams trans fat” when they are still high in total fat and saturated fat. Job well done here, although they are really only asking for the companies to add a disclosure statement to correct this. CSPI and other nutrition experts like myself would ideally want them to ban the statement entirely in a product exceeding the total fat and saturated fat guidelines.
And I would understand them going after companies stating “made with whole wheat,” when the product only contains a small portion of whole wheat – but then they didn’t go after these companies in this go-around.
But I’m not so thrilled about them going after companies selling whole foods like olive oil, walnuts and green tea. I am trying to move people toward eating more whole foods – foods that offer phytochemicals and other potentially helpful food components such as fiber and monounsaturated fat – instead of processed foods. These companies mostly got in trouble for the information they include on their websites. Maybe it’s just me, but I am much more concerned about what is being stated on product labels than on company websites.
As far as information on websites, I understand that health information and study results presented should clearly state whether the evidence is “suggestive” or “preliminary.” But in some cases I think consumers actually benefit from seeing some of this new information as it is emerging, especially if the bottom line is leading them to consume more whole foods. If we all waited for the government to review study evidence and make their all important “health claims” for various nutrient and disease associations, some of this potentially powerful information might not get out to those interested for another decade.
What do you think? What are some of the most outrageous health claims you have seen on food packages?
Ebola-Reston found in the Philippines, killing pigs to stop spread.
Filed under: Banned Foods, Dangerous Foods, Is it Safe?, What it is?
MANILA, Feb 23 (Reuters) – The Philippines will slaughter 6,000 pigs at a hog farm north of the capital Manila to prevent the spread of the Ebola-Reston virus, health and farm officials said on Monday.
But the government has lifted a quarantine on a second hog farm after tests by experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO), World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and Food and the Agriculture Organisation (FAO) showed no more signs of the disease.
The country has more than 13 million heads of swine and the discovery of Ebola-Reston on two hog farms north of Manila was isolated, the government said.
"There is ongoing viral transmission in Bulacan ... as a precautionary measure, depopulation will be carried out in the Bulacan farm," Health Secretary Francisco Duque told reporters, referring to the farm just north of Manila.
The government said 6,000 pigs would be killed, burned and buried as experts sought to determine the source of Ebola-Reston in pigs as well as pig-to-pig and from pig-to-human transmission. Duque said 147 human samples have been tested for Ebola, but only six have tested positive. But all six remain healthy, he added.
"Ebola-Reston poses a low risk to human health at this time," Duque said.
It is the first time the virus has been found outside monkeys and the first time it has been found in pigs. The virus had previously jumped from monkeys to humans but this was the first case of a jump from hogs.
The Ebola-Reston virus was found in the Philippines as early as the late 1980s and 25 people were found infected after contact with sick monkeys. But only one developed flu-like symptoms and later recovered. (Reporting by Manny Mogato; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
Melamine may be in cocoa products, Topaz Brand Wafer Rolls (May be in Big Lots)
Filed under: Banned Foods, BPA,Bishenol A, China Product Safety, Dangerous Foods, Food Dyes, holiday food safety, Melamine, Red Dye 1, U.S.A and Melamine Scare, What it is?
Recalls: cocoa products, Topaz brand Wafer Rolls
The following recalls have been announced:
_Dorsey Marketing Inc. is recalling G&J Gourmet Market cocoa products because they might contain melamine, a chemical used in plastics and not approved to be directly added to food in the U.S. No illnesses have been reported, according to the company, based in Saint-Laurent, Quebec. The recalled products include G&J Hot Cocoa Stuffer, item 120144; G&J His and Hers Hot Cocoa Set, item 120129; G&J Cocoa item, item 120126, sold in French Vanilla Cocoa and Double Chocolate Cocoa flavors. The recalled products were imported into the United States by the company. They were distributed nationwide to Big Lots during the weeks of Sept. 22 and Sept. 29 this year and to Shopko during the week of Oct. 6. For more information, consumers can e-mail the company: recall(at)dmi-global.com.
_National Brands Inc. is recalling all its 4.76-ounce and 12.3-ounce cans of Topaz brand Wafer Rolls because the products might be contaminated with melamine. No illnesses have been reported, according to the Spring Valley, N.Y., company. The recalled products were sold in four flavors and they were distributed nationwide through retail stores. For more information, consumers can call 866-238-5201.
Cocaine laced with levamisole, causes fatal illness
Just say no to drugs. Here is another example of why drugs are scary. You don't know the guy who is cutting your drugs, you think he cares about your health? No. Check it out the coke is being cut with levamisole, which is used to treat treat intestinal worms in humans and animals. The problem is it is suppressing peoples immune system to the point where a common cold could kill you! If you did some coke and found yourself sick and with a fever after, I suggest going to doctor ASAP. So far they only found this in Canada, the thing is after following banned foods and items that make people sick, one thing I know is these things escalate and grow, like the melamine crisis.
Maybe just one dealer cut the coke with that crap. Lets hope so.
This is the official story from the Canadian Press.
Seven people in Alberta have developed a form of immune system suppression after consuming cocaine laced with a chemical compound, public health officials said Friday.
The individuals developed agranulocytosis, a condition that makes the immune system incapable of fighting off infections.
It makes common infections become serious, even fatal, quite quickly.
"We are advising anyone who develops a fever or other signs of infection and has used cocaine to seek medical attention quickly," Dr. Gerry Predy, Alberta's Acting Chief Medical Officer of Health, said in a news release.
"Any skin abscess or lung infection that develops rapidly should also be treated immediately."
Officials have linked the cases to cocaine laced with levamisole, a chemical compound developed to treat intestinal worms in humans and animals.
The cases were reported in Edmonton, Red Deer, and in undisclosed locations in southern and northern Alberta.
Doctors in Alberta have been advised they should test and treat patients for this condition if they complain of a fever or other signs of infection after using cocaine.
What is BPA or Bishenol A?
Bisphenol A, commonly abbreviated as BPA, is an organic compound with two phenol functional groups. It is a difunctional building block of several important polymers and polymer additives. With an annual production of 2–3 million tonnes, it is an important monomer in the production of polycarbonate.
Suspected of being hazardous to humans since the 1930s, concerns about the use of bisphenol A in consumer products grabbed headlines in 2008 when several governments issued reports questioning its safety, and some retailers pulled products made from it off their shelves.
Bisphenol A (BPA) is an industrial chemical used to make polycarbonate plastic resins, epoxy resins, and other products.
esearchers tested more than 2000 people between the ages of six and 85. And 93 percent of them tested positive for BPA, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Why should you care? Well, BPA is a component of the polycarbonate plastic in eyeglass lenses and DVDs among other things. And high levels of it have been linked to heart disease, diabetes and liver failure in humans, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In fact, the National Toxicology Program warns that BPA may cause babies to develop abnormally. The Canadian government went so far as to ban it in baby bottles as well as listing it as a toxic substance. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency maintain that BPA is perfectly safe.
Congress, for its part, is considering banning the substance in some products. In the meantime, note that items made from BPA are typically marked with a number seven. These plastics should never be microwaved or exposed to hot liquids—heat can dissolve BPA into what you’re drinking.
( does that sound like a good idea in your body?? reminds me of melamine)
The FDA says it is safe, but now new articles are saying maybe we should not trust them.
Melamine effects on the body, or what does Melamine do?
What does melamine do in the body?
A Cornell veterinarian told us last year that melamine is not considered to be “a very toxic compound,” but can result in kidney stones and kidney failure especially in small animals. Investigators found crystals made up of melamine and its byproducts in the urine and kidneys of in the dogs and cats that were poisoned last year. Because it formed crystals in the body and was not fully dissolved in urine, the melamine gathered in the kidney, gunking up the organ and forming stones. The pets that died suffered acute kidney failure.
This is what is happening to small children who have ingested melamine.
Who is responsible for this tragedy?
Brief History of
Melamine
By Kate Pickert Wednesday, Sep. 17, 2008
melamine
Sanlu, China’s biggest milk powder producer recalled 700 tons of milk powder after inspectors found the industrial contaminant, melamine in some of its packages.
China Photos / Getty
Melamine, the cheap compound used to bulk up baby formula in China that has sickened at least 1,200 babies across the country and killed at least two so far, once had a much less dubious purpose and, in fact, can be found in some form in most American homes.
Composed of nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen, the compound was invented in the 1830s by a German scientist and came into fashion as a material used to make plastics and laminates in the late 1930s. When combined with formaldehyde and exposed to extreme heat, melamine creates a moldable material that, when cooled, is virtually unbreakable and dishwasher-safe.
This made it the durable dishware of choice on some U.S. Navy ships during World War II.
After the war, designer Russel Wright and the St. Louis-based company Branchell, among others, developed molded dinnerware out of melamine, known as Melmac, designing sets under names like "Flair," "Fortiflex" and "Color-Flyte."
Throughout the 1950s, as Americans started buying processed foods and washing machines, clamoring for anything that conveyed "modern," colorful melamine bowls and plates became mainstays in kitchens across the country. Unfortunately, Melmac tableware was prone to scratches and stains and so the dishes fell out of favor by the 1970s, as more resilient household plastics were phased in and families returned to ceramic, china and glass-made dishes.
In the past decade or so, Melmac has become popular again, with collectors and savvy eBay dealers selling Wright and Branchell pieces, and new designers using the material for retro-themed household items.
But as melamine experienced a resurgence in American kitchens, the material — in powdered form — has also come into use by certain unscrupulous food companies as a cheap and abundant filler substance for products ranging from livestock feed to pet food — and now, apparently, to baby formula. In some tests used to determine the nutritional value of a foodstuff, melamine shows up as a protein — so manufacturers can use the compound to make their products appear more nutritious.
Melamine is not toxic, but inside the body it can cause kidney stones and renal failure.
In 2007, material containing melamine — but labeled as wheat gluten and rice protein — was shipped from Chinese manufacturers to pet food companies in the U.S. and elsewhere. After a Canadian pet food company announced it was voluntarily recalling food that was sickening pets, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration fielded thousands of similar complaints across the U.S. Soon after, a myriad of pet foods contaminated with the tainted gluten and protein from China were recalled from the market, but not before thousands of pets had died from renal failure.
This month, under pressure from the New Zealand government, which had received complaints that a Chinese manufacturer was ignoring reports that its baby formula was sickening infants, China announced an investigation. Days later, it emerged that more than 1,000 babies were sick, many contracting kidney stones, after consuming melamine-tainted formula. At least two babies have died. On Sept. 13, China said that 19 people have been detained in the ensuing probe. Some critics, however, have suggested China knew about the link between the sick babies and malamine-laced formula months ago — well before the Summer Olympics in Beijing — but did not investigate until external pressure left them no choice.
I will continue to update this as I learn more and find more information for you.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ)
Melamine in Food Products Manufactured in China
* Printer-friendly version
News reports and the World Health Organization (WHO) state that tens of thousands of infants in China who consumed infant formula contaminated with melamine are suffering from urinary tract stones, kidney damage, and kidney failure. For more information visit the Food and Drug Administration website.
What is melamine?
Melamine is a synthetic chemical with a variety of industrial uses including the production of resins and foams, cleaning products, fertilizers and pesticides. It does not occur naturally in food.
Why is melamine dangerous in food?
Animal studies have demonstrated that exposure to low levels of melamine produced no observable toxic effects. Exposures to high levels of melamine, or exposures to lower doses of melamine together with certain other chemicals, have caused urinary tract problems in animals. These have included urinary tract and kidney crystal and stone formation, and kidney failure. Exposures of animals to high doses of melamine over long time periods (years) have been associated with cancer of the bladder.
Should I be worried about food products purchased or consumed in the United States?
The United States does not allow melamine to be used as a food ingredient. Most reports of melamine in food products and of health problems related to melamine in food products have centered in China. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is working together with local, state, federal, and international agencies to ensure the safety of the American food supply including broadening its domestic and import sampling and testing of milk-derived ingredients and finished food products containing milk, such as candies, desserts, and beverages that could contain these ingredients from Chinese sources. As of October 6, 2008, FDA testing of milk- based products imported into the United States from China had found melamine contamination in only a few products (e.g., White Rabbit Creamy Candies and Mr. Brown’s coffee mixes). For current information on whether food products purchased in the U.S. might pose a concern about melamine, visit the Food and Drug Administration website.
Why are infants particularly affected?
Infants may be more affected than other people because formula is their primary food source and they therefore consume more melamine per unit of body weight than older children and adults who consume a variety of foods.
What should I do if I believe I or my child may already have been exposed to melamine, for example, during travel to China?
See a doctor right away if you or your infant has any of the following symptoms: stomach pain; vomiting; fever; irritability or excessive crying; blood, crystals, or particles in urine; painful urination; little or no urine; swelling of hands, feet, or face.
If I’m pregnant or breastfeeding and think I may have been exposed to melamine, would it be toxic to my baby?
If you are pregnant and have already ingested some of these listed products or you are breastfeeding while ingesting the listed products, discontinue their use. Effects on the unborn child are unknown. Melamine only stays in the body for a few days. The effects on the kidneys of the formula-fed infants in China are thought to result from continuous use of the products containing relatively high concentrations of melamine over many days.
Should my child or I be tested for melamine exposure?
Laboratory tests for melamine in blood serum and urine exist but are still investigational and not yet commercially available. Because many people are exposed to very small, nontoxic amounts of melamine from different sources in the environment and industry, detection of melamine in the body would not necessarily predict future illness.
How long does melamine stay in the body?
Scientists do not know exactly how long it takes the human body to eliminate melamine. Animal studies suggest that excretion is fairly rapid—for example, half of the total quantity of melamine consumed was eliminated in 4 hours in pigs and 3 hours in rats.
How should health care providers treat potential melamine exposures?
The most important action is to stop any ongoing exposure. Specific laboratory and imaging studies can be used based on the patient’s symptoms, for example to evaluate kidney function or urinary stones.
What exactly is Melamine?
What exactly is melamine?
Melamine is an organic compound that is often combined with formaldehyde to produce melamine resin, a synthetic polymer which is fire resistant and heat tolerant. Melamine resin is a very versatile material with a highly stable structure. Uses for melamine include whiteboards, floor tiles, kitchenware, fire retardant fabrics, and commercial filters. Melamine can be easily molded while warm, but will set into a fixed form. This property makes it ideally suited to certain industrial applications.
Its most common form, melamine resin, a mix of melamine and formaldehyde, is used in the manufacture of formica, floor tiles, whiteboards and kitchenware.
Melamine resin is manufactured by mixing urea with formaldehyde under heat and pressure. The substances begin to polymerize and are forced into a mold which will create the desired shape. Under pressure, melamine releases water, which could make the plastic unstable if it is not removed. The materials finish polymerizing and create a finished product, melamine resin.
-- Melamine is a white powder used in plastic-making. It was first synthesised by a German scientist in the 1830s.
WHY ADD MELAMINE TO MILK POWDER?
-- Melamine is rich in nitrogen, and relatively cheap. Adding it to sub-standard or watered-down milk makes the milk's protein level appear higher. Standard quality tests estimate protein levels by measuring nitrogen content.
IS THIS WHY IT WAS ADDED TO PET FOOD?
-- Yes. Melamine was linked to the deaths of cats and dogs in the United States last year after it was added to wheat gluten and other pet food ingredients exported from China, in another attempt to boost the products' apparent protein content.
Now we are finding new foods all over the world that have melamine.
Melamine resin is known as a thermoset plastic, because the plastic is fixed after molding. If exposed to enough heat, melamine will melt. For this reason, melamine dishware should not be exposed to high temperatures like those in the oven and microwave. However, the plastic is able to withstand higher temperatures than other plastics. Because it is a thermoset plastic, melamine resin is difficult to recycle.
Melamine can be made into a foam product. Melamine foam has a distinctive structure composed of stacked bubble shapes, which are extremely hard and therefore can easily clean a wide variety of substances. Melamine foam is marketed under a variety of commercial names including Magic Eraser, a cleaning tool well known for removing scuffs and dirt from a wide range of surfaces.
Melamine resin is used in Formica and similar construction products made from composite materials. Formica is made using melamine resin, which is used to coat the fibers in the upper layer of the construction product. The melamine resin makes the end result heat resistant, so that hot objects can be set on the counter without concern. The surface of the material is designed to be easily wiped and cleaned, creating a long lived household product.
Melamine also plays a role in a wide range of flame resistant materials. These include textiles used in upholstery and the uniforms worn by firemen. Thermal liners, heat resistant gloves, and aprons to protect from splashback of hot substances are made using melamine. Melamine will protect a wearer from heat hazards, and will help to resist the spread of fire in aircraft and buses by providing a fire blocker.
Melamine is also used in the manufacture of some filters. The material is porous and will admit substances to pass through, but can be used to filter out particles of a particular size. Melamine filters are capable of handling a high capacity and can be used in hot environments due to the heat resistance of melamine. Melamine filters are also extremely efficient.
Aside from common commercial uses, melamine became a topic of much discussion in early 2007, when veterinary scientists determined it to be the cause of hundreds of pet deaths, because of pet food contamination. Prior to these reports, melamine had been regarded as non-toxic or minimally toxic. However, because of the unexplained presence of melamine in wheat gluten added to mass-produced dog and cat foods, it is the most likely cause. Pet owners report symptoms that are commonly associated with renal failure, which could be explained by the ammonia that may result from the digestion of the melamine.
See: What does melamine do to the body?
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