What happened
The whole story begins when recently, it was detected that the milk made in China have traces of melamine. A lot of babies in China, after taking in contaminated milk, had fallen ill and some had even died because of the toxicity. While most cases are contained in China itself, there are reports of one baby who suffered in HK. Despite this, a lot of countries had decided to ban china products outright for fear of further contamination. In Singapore, several products had been taken off the shelves too.
What is melamine
Melamine is a compound that is used in making plastics or fertilizers. It is a non-protein nitrogen containing compound, with about 66% nitrogen by mass and is known by it chemical name as 1,3,5-Triazine-2,4,6-triamine. Due to its high nitrogen content and its cheap cost, it is added to milk by farmer and/or companies to boost the nitrogen content of the raw milk so as to pass the protein test, which is used as an indicator that the raw milk supplied is of high quality.
Melamine can cause bladder and reproductive damages, specifically in the formation of kidney stones. The lethal dose of melamine is more than 3 g per kg of body mass. As such, most if not all the affected victims are babies, as their body mass are much lower than adults and hence the ingested amount, over a prolonged period of time, causes the above mentioned effects. Read more..By: La Papillion
I read an interesting company update by DMG and partners regarding China milk. While I can't reproduce the entire report by cutting and pasting, I'll summarise the pertinent points here.
What happened
The whole story begins when recently, it was detected that the milk made in China have traces of melamine. A lot of babies in China, after taking in contaminated milk, had fallen ill and some had even died because of the toxicity. While most cases are contained in China itself, there are reports of one baby who suffered in HK. Despite this, a lot of countries had decided to ban china products outright for fear of further contamination. In Singapore, several products had been taken off the shelves too.
What is melamine
Melamine is a compound that is used in making plastics or fertilizers. It is a non-protein nitrogen containing compound, with about 66% nitrogen by mass and is known by it chemical name as 1,3,5-Triazine-2,4,6-triamine. Due to its high nitrogen content and its cheap cost, it is added to milk by farmer and/or companies to boost the nitrogen content of the raw milk so as to pass the protein test, which is used as an indicator that the raw milk supplied is of high quality.
Melamine can cause bladder and reproductive damages, specifically in the formation of kidney stones. The lethal dose of melamine is more than 3 g per kg of body mass. As such, most if not all the affected victims are babies, as their body mass are much lower than adults and hence the ingested amount, over a prolonged period of time, causes the above mentioned effects. Read more..
What happened
The whole story begins when recently, it was detected that the milk made in China have traces of melamine. A lot of babies in China, after taking in contaminated milk, had fallen ill and some had even died because of the toxicity. While most cases are contained in China itself, there are reports of one baby who suffered in HK. Despite this, a lot of countries had decided to ban china products outright for fear of further contamination. In Singapore, several products had been taken off the shelves too.
What is melamine
Melamine is a compound that is used in making plastics or fertilizers. It is a non-protein nitrogen containing compound, with about 66% nitrogen by mass and is known by it chemical name as 1,3,5-Triazine-2,4,6-triamine. Due to its high nitrogen content and its cheap cost, it is added to milk by farmer and/or companies to boost the nitrogen content of the raw milk so as to pass the protein test, which is used as an indicator that the raw milk supplied is of high quality.
Melamine can cause bladder and reproductive damages, specifically in the formation of kidney stones. The lethal dose of melamine is more than 3 g per kg of body mass. As such, most if not all the affected victims are babies, as their body mass are much lower than adults and hence the ingested amount, over a prolonged period of time, causes the above mentioned effects. Read more..
