Melamine

[chem geek]

Take a look at this link where it is now believed that BOTH melamine and cyanuric acid were present in the rice protein and wheat gluten imported from China. Yikes! We know what happens when you combine those two -- you precipitate melamine cyanurate (that's what the CYA pool test is all about) and apparently that's what happened in those unfortunate pets who ate contaminated food.

In this thread I wrote about how I asked Taylor how the CYA test could measure 20 ppm CYA since that is the solubility of melamine cyanurate in water. They wrote back that the CYA pool test is buffered at low pH which apparently precipitates this substance since the 20 ppm solubility is only at a pH of 7. So the melamine and cyanuric acid may have been separate in the food, but when these hit the acidic stomach they likely precipitated (after some time -- remember the 30 seconds of mixing in the CYA test) and then blocked the kidneys.

What a horrible, horrible thing. What were these people in China thinking?

Richard