I’ve been following the melamine in pet food, human food, candy, baby formula… for close to 2 years.
It is interesting how this story developed. First, as a supposedly “isolated incident in pet food”. Then, a bigger problem “limited to pet food”. Then, in human food, but “only in limited cases”. Now, in baby formula, but, “don’t worry, it is safe”.
The agencies that are meant to protect us, seem to me more interested in making soothing reassurances… than to actually inform and protect us. The FDA & CDC should be honest with us, so we can make personal choices about how much of these chemicals we want to expose ourselves to.
Last year the NYT told us that melamine is widely used in China to make low-quality animal feed appear more nutritious.
Local blogger David Goldstein posted on this topic. In it, he attacks the CDC for running a PR compaign and attacks the FDA for failing to act to protect us from this practice. He also has some interesting analysis worth reading.
Two days ago, in the Washington Post
“Just one month ago, the FDA had been very clear about how they could not set a safe level of melamine in formula for babies,” said Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization. “Now they’re saying trace levels are no problem. What changed?”
…
Critics said the FDA’s reassurances about products carry less weight after the recent controversy over bisphenol-A, a chemical found in plastic baby bottles, dinnerware and the linings of food cans. The FDA dismissed a growing body of scientific evidence that has linked BPA to health problems even as worried consumers stopped buying BPA-containing products. Instead, the FDA relied on two industry-funded studies that concluded that BPA did not pose a health risk. Last month, the agency’s science advisory board said the agency should no longer maintain that BPA is safe.
“When FDA claims there isn’t any reason to worry, that’s exactly what the consumer should do,” said Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group. “The once-revered public health agency has morphed into a taxpayer-funded public relations arm for the very industries it was created to oversee.”
Today Bloomberg reports that the FDA has set a safe level of 1 part per million for melamine OR cyanuric acid.
The FDA still doesn’t know what level is safe if both compounds are present in formula because the combination has been linked to more buildup in the kidneys. For other foods, that level is 2.5 parts per million.
There are a couple of interesting points here. First is, the FDA is responding to a market pressure to NOT recall the contaminated products. Instead, they rushed and set a “safe limit” so the existing product on the shelves need not be recalled.
Second, we see the notion of two chemicals interacting to make both of them more toxic. In this case melamine alone or cyanuric acid alone are less harmful than when you put the two of them together. This effect is called synergistic toxicity.
Where else have we herd about synergistic toxicity? Mercury in vaccines. Mercury becomes much more toxic when mixed with antibiotics and other heavy metals. In some cases, the toxic multiplier is over 100x. And speaking of mercury in vaccines, the 25,000 parts per billion needlessly added to some vaccines means that more than 100 times more of the much, much more toxic mercury gets injected into your baby’s arm from a single flu shot than the amount of melamine in a can of baby formula:
Nestle SA’s liquid Good Start Supreme Infant Formula with Iron tested positive for melamine in as much as 0.14 parts per million, and cyanuric acid was found in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s powder Enfamil Lipil with Iron, in as much as 0.249 parts per million, Sundlof said.
What’s not clear to me is, what if your baby drinks more than one can of formula in a day? And what happens if your baby drinks this stuff for a couple of months? And are newborn babies more sensitive than older babies?
So, do you think the FDA should declare these new chemicals safe? Should the baby formula makers be required to list the chemicals on their label, so that a shopper could choose a product without the chemicals?
