National Toxicology Program Report June 2008

Safemama.com reported in early October that a draft of a research paper created for the National Toxicology Program Board of Scientific Counselors Meeting of June 11-12, 2008 contains information about melamine in our food as well as in our dishware. The report is filled with links to various other research studies about melamine, cyanuric acid, melamine cyanurate (those are the crystals that cause kidney failure), melamine derivatives and melamine related triazines. The report recognizes:

"It should be emphasized that although the FDA/CFSAN Interim Melamine and Analogues Safety/Risk Assessment indicated that the scenario-driven consumption of meat products was “very unlikely to pose a human health risk” (10), the assessment did not take into account the currently known potent synergistic toxicological effect of melamine with cyanuric acid."

And, I bet this makes vegetarians feel good. NOT!

"Another potential source of human exposure is vegetarian food preparation practices involving high levels of gluten. In such a scenario, the level of intake of melamine and its analogues could be similar to or even slightly higher than the levels that elicit toxicity in animal tests."

In the left column of my blog I provide a link to an article by washingtonpost.com pointing out that the wheat gluten may not have been gluten after all, but actually highly contaminated wheat flour.
But here is one of my favorite excerpts from the report:

"Melamine resin, a hard thermosetting polymer made from melamine and formaldehyde, is widely used in the US in the form of kitchenware, including plates, bowls, mugs and utensils. Reports in the literature indicate that some kitchenware based on melamine resin leach
considerable amounts of melamine monomer. A migration of up to 2.5 mg melamine/ 100 cm2 was observed under conditions that simulate an exposure to hot acidic foods (13, 14)."

OK. If CONSIDERABLE levels of leaching, er, "migration" of melamine has been observed in dishware, then why on Earth would any level - any PPM level - be acceptable in our food. The food that we eat. The food that may be acidic. And heated...until it's HOT. Ugh. 

Finally:

"...the possibility that the human food chain may be indirectly or directly
contaminated with these triazines cannot be ignored. This possibility is of particular concern given the fact that in the US an estimated 13% of adults aged 20 or older present physiological evidence of chronic kidney disease (18) and as such may be particularly susceptible to such an exposure."

and

"It is critical for the FDA agencies to develop a good basic science understanding of the nephrotoxic potential of the concurrent human exposure to melamine and cyanuric acid."

FDA. What will they do next?