I. Forget Health. The FDA’s Job is to Decide How Much Melamine the Market Will Allow It is hard not to think the worst of the Bush administration. They took an outbreak of food poisoning this summer and botched it so badly that they just about killed the Mexican tomato industry---while doing a big favor for the greenhouse tomato industry, which should have seen prices fall as summer crops came in. It took local public health officials to locate the true source---peppers. Score another one for rising food prices.
Dixiegrrrrl has an excellent piece in DU today about how the FDA has sanctioned trace amounts of the plastic
melamine in our foods
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4471483&mesg_id=4471483For those who like chemistry, wiki has a nice write up about melamine here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MelamineBasically, this chemical has lots of potential uses in fire retardants, plastics, pesticides. However, during the last few years, China has faced a severe surplus of the material and seen world prices for it drop. That is why there was so much of it lying around. Melamine itself is not particularly toxic. But note also that one of the breakdown products is
cyanuric acid, and that the parent melamine can then combine with its own breakdown product cyanuric acid (I guess you could call this incest) to produce the chemical
melamine cyanurate which forms crystals in water----and it is this crystalline compound that causes the kidney stones and kidney damage that make melamine toxic to pets and humans.
Since melamine has become dirt cheap and abundant and since it is loaded with nitrogen---which is also found in protein----Chinese food manufacturers decided to throw it in a variety of food products to make milk, gluten, eggs and other protein rich foods look extra protein rich when they are tested for their nitrogen content. If the melamine had ever been pure melamine, maybe no one would have known the difference. However, it was not pure, and it reacted with impurities. The new, toxic form of the substance killed pets and later caused an epidemic of kidney stones and renal failure in Chinese infants fed contaminated formula. Note that a long term effect of the drug can be
bladder cancer so those poor children are not home free.
One rationale for allowing trace amounts of melamine in foods is the fact that plastics can contain melamine. Food is packaged in plastic, and therefore, theoretically, tiny amounts of melamine can leech into foodstuffs from the packaging even if the food is unadulterated. However, as Dixiegrrrrl has written, the FDA’s action seems to sanction melamine contamination and other deceptive, cost saving measures practiced by China. This aids China. It also helps the U.S. food industry.
As long as food manufacturers in the U.S. know that they can get away with selling products with small amounts of poisonous contaminants, they will apply no pressure on China to clean up its act. If U.S. buyers continue to demand ridiculously low priced food stuffs out of China, with no concern about how many corners are cut to achieve the cost savings, China will continue to use its ingenuity to cuts those corners. In a few years, the FDA may have a list of a dozen or more poisons that China is allowed to add to our food supply, each in a small amount, the sum of which could well kill us---slowly of course, since neither Chinese nor American businessmen want to lose their market.
There is also a kind of sad fatalism at work here. When did the official attitude towards melamine change from
let’s clean it up! to
can’t we all get along? About the same time that countries like New Zealand realized that
melamine is everywhere. From this September.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/24232/low-level-melamine-acceptable-food-safety-experts New Zealand food safety experts say they are "struggling" to determine a safe level of melamine in the nation's diet, but have opted for a threshold of 5 parts per million.
The New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) today said that melamine now appeared to be widespread in the food chain, but claimed it was harmless at low levels.
"We know that the presence of this chemical is part and parcel of our life today, apparently leaching from plastics and contact materials during processing and packaging in trace quantities," said NZFSA director of compliance and investigation Dr Geoff Allen.
"At low levels it causes us no harm," he said.
We wish. We hope. We pray.
Everyday, we are told that we just have to suck it up and live with high ozone in our city air----because that is the cost of prosperity and a healthy tax base. Even if the high ozone is killing unborn children with prematurity (paging Right to Life!) children with pneumonia and adults with heart attacks and everyone with asthma. We are told that cancer causing chemicals are also a price for economic prosperity---though it’s a funny thing, the carcinogenic chemicals always wind up next door to the poorest, most oppressed, usually minority communities that share in the wealth least. Now,
the FDA is trying to convince people that food adulteration is essential for our economic survival. And anyway, there is nothing that we can do about it.
Eat your plastic. It’s good for the economy.
II. What You Do Not Look For Can Not Hurt You(r Reputation): Ammeline and Blindness Kidney stones are scary. Blindness is scarier.
I keep waiting for some health agency or regulatory body to issue a statement about
ammeline . So far, I have not even seen a reference to the episode which occurred in Japan way back in the 1970s, when chicken feed was contaminated with the breakdown product of melamine in order to artificially increase its nitrogen content (sound familiar) and a whole bunch of
baby chicks went blind. That’s because ammeline does not attack the kidneys like its parent compound. It goes after the eyes.
Here is some information about ammeline:
http://books.google.com/books?id=V7D020dl3_oC&pg=PA78&lpg=PA78&dq=melamine+retina&source=web&ots=S1E9Fz73y-&sig=893dq73Cm49wVFqheH-ya-KMaC4&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPA78,M1Note that it causes
retinal edema, degeneration and finally detachment over the course of a week when it is eaten in large enough quantities.
Here is wiki on ammeline. It is another hydrolysis product of melamine. Replace one ammonia with one hydroxyl ion and there you go.
Before you say
But the Chinese would only adulterate their food with the finest grade melamine check out these two articles about how producers of milk and other protein food used
melamine scrap in their food. Because it was cheap.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/business/worldbusiness/30food.html?_r=1&oref=slogin For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.
“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,” said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.”
Melamine scrap contains a lot more than just melamine.
http://en.epochtimes.com/n2/china/melamine-china-milk-powder-5370.html If the melamine contained in the milk powder or liquid milk comes from adding melamine scrap, there will be more ingredients to be worried about.
A reporter in Caijing learned that as an impure form of the chemical, such leftover melamine scrap often contains urea, ammonia, silica, potassium nitrate, sodium nitrite, acetic acid, and activated carbon. Sodium nitrite is also internationally recognized as a carcinogen.
According to China’s State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (SAQSIQ), the content of melamine in Sanlu baby milk powder products is as high as 2,563 milligrams per kilogram. Some industry insiders said that the high concentration of melamine in some brands of milk powder could be linked to hidden operating rules for milk powder manufacturers.
http://itchmoforums.com/recall-nonpet-food/melamine-suspected-chinese-officials-say-baby-formula-tied-to-kidney-stones-t6256.1245.htmlScroll down the page here to see that ammeline was found in the wheat gluten that poisoned dogs last year in amounts up to 10mg/kg (and then check out the toxicology reference above to see that amounts of 0.5% chemical content by weight caused blindness in some baby chicks after only two days). I have found studies of animals whose kidneys were tested for effects from contaminated Chinese protein but none who have had retinal exams. If anyone knows of any studies, please link them! There is no way to know what the effect of ammeline is on the eyes of infants (like the thousand infants sickened by China’s contaminated formula) or young pets
if doctors and veterinarians do not look for retinal damage . However any animal with a developing eye may have the same problem which the baby chick’s did in Japan. There is also no way to know if healthy or diabetic adults may have suffered eye problems from consuming food contaminated with melamine scrap---unless someone examines their eyes. The FDA and the NIH should be studying this problem. Instead, they are strangely silent.
III. Look Out for Formoguanamine, Too Look, I am no chemical engineer. I have never worked in a chemical factory, and I do not know how they manufacture or store melamine scrap (under what temperature or conditions.) I am just going on hunches here, erring on the side of caution since China wants to cover it all up---and so, apparently, does our own FDA. Here is what wiki says (in a nice summary of the Chinese faux protein scandal)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_protein_export_contamination Melamine production in China has also been reported as using coal as raw material.<6> This production has been described as also producing "melamine scrap" which is not "pure melamine but impure melamine scrap that is sold more cheaply as the waste product after melamine is produced by chemical and fertilizer factories here."<41> Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group, the company reported by the New York Times as producing melamine from coal, produces and sells both urea and melamine but does not list melamine resin as a product.<42> Melamine production in China has increased greatly in recent years and was described as in "serious surplus" in 2006 .<43> In the United States Geological Survey 2004 Minerals Survey Yearbook, in a report on worldwide nitrogen production, the author stated that "China continued to plan and construct new ammonia and urea plants using coal gasification technology."<44>
The off-gas in production contains large amounts of ammonia (see melamine synthesis). Therefore melamine production is often integrated into urea production which uses ammonia as feedstock. Crystallization and washing of melamine generates a considerable amount of waste water, which is a pollutant if discharged directly into the environment. The waste water may be concentrated into a solid (1.5-5% of the weight) for easier disposal. The solid may contain approximately 70% melamine, 23% oxytriazines (ammeline, ammelide and cyanuric acid), 0.7% polycondensates (melem, melam and melon).
They make melamine scrap from coal.
Think about what a coal miner's lung looks like.
Now just imagine what kind of chemicals must be in the
scrap that they throw away. And imagine eating a big heaping plate full of it. Yum.
The point I am trying to make is who knows what is in scrap melamine. Maybe more than the FDA is checking for. I want to mention
formoguanamine because it is formed from the same chemical used to make melamine
http://patents.ic.gc.ca/cipo/cpd/en/patent/508090/summary.htmlAnd researchers in Japan have shown that two injections of the compound can induce retinal blindness in an adult bird.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/y1n1558732312747/Yeah, I know PETA is peeved. But the take home message is that there may be any number of contaminants in melamine scrap that have unsuspected side effects. And some of those are not on the FDA list when they turn on the gas chromatograph or mass spectrometer. Some of these contaminants may have been deliberately left off the list.
If anyone knows why formoguanamine can
not be formed by hydrogenation of dycyandiamide under the conditions in which they manufacture melamine scrap or later when the stuff is sitting around, please let me know. My concern for Chinese babies is that many thousands may have consumed lots of contaminants in their early months. Maybe they escaped kidney damage but other organs—like their eyes---were affected, and no one will know until they start having problems in school. And what about people in the United States who have been using lots of powdered protein supplements? That includes diabetics and some very sick people who need to keep their strength up. If the manufacturers of nutritional supplements have been buying their “milk powders” on the world market, what are the odds that some Chinese contaminants have gotten in there? What about exercise enthusiasts who use protein powders daily to help build up muscles while keeping their fat intake low? Could they be the victims of slow poisoning?
If melamine scrap had been added to our food supply by a rival food producer---say a member of the European Union like France---all products would have been yanked from the shelves and NIH studies would already be underway. Dixiegrrrrl is correct. China is being protected, because it is a partner in the crimes of the Bush administration and the criminal activities of too many American corporations.
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