Melamine and Milk

Milk scandal, as they call it on the news these days, should not be too much a surprise to anyone. We have seen enough of these tainted products from China that we should still keep in mind that regulation in China is still questionable for quality control on many products. We had the pet food recall in 2007, toys with lead, and I have even seen rumor that someone added newspaper in meat buns as meat substitute.

This time, somewhere along the supply chain, milk suppliers added urea or melamine to boost the products apparent protein concentration so they can sell diluted milk for more profit. Melamine itself is about as toxic as sodium chloride, or salt, but the problem is that melamine can bind with cyanuric acid (another relatively non-toxic chemical) to form kidney stones. Cyanuric acid can come from drinking water treated with disinfectant. Many infants have been diagnosed with kidney problems after prolonged exposure to these baby formula or powdered milk.

It is not clear to me whether the milk suppliers added melamine directly or urea, which is a fertilizer and cheaper than melamine, and then the high heat process in pasteurization turned it into melamine. In any case, the diluted milk would be less nutritious and the high level of melamine may be the reason behind kidney problems in the infants.

In China, the police has arrested some people engaged in making and selling protein boosters based on melamine to milk producers and suppliers. They said they had been doing this since the second half of 2007, which coincides with the time major milk powder manufacturers started to receive complaints in Dec. 2007. They were not allowed to bring the news to light due to the Olympic Games in the summer.

Many products containing milk like cookies and coffee have been recalled, and countries around the world are testing products for melamine, but I think no one really knows how much melamine is safe for consumption. Plus, we get melamine from certain food packaging as well.

More information can be found on the World Health Organization website http://www.who.int/foodsafety/fs_management/Melamine.pdf

A post about the same thing on The Economist
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/techview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12343910&fsrc=nwl