Could it be that cyanuric acid was added to milk?

I also looked 'melamine' up in Wikipedia and went to its Toxicity section.

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Melamine by itself is non-toxic in low doses, but when combined with cyanuric acid it can cause fatal kidney stones due to the formation of an insoluble melamine cyanurate.

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I think I had come across that 'cyanuric' thing earlier. I went back to the articles I had read. Ah, yes. It's in the report from the University of Maine Food Science and Human Nutrition Department. 

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Qoute:

He (Brian Perkin) noted that the toxicity may be related to the addition of cyanuric acid or by the addition of a melamine cyanuric acid complex, such as fire retardant.

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According to (A.A. Babayan, A.V.Aleksandryan, "Toxicological characteristics of melamine cyanurate, melamine and cyanuric acid", Zhurnal Eksperimental'noi i Klinicheskoi Meditsiny, Vol.25, 345-9 (1985). Original article in Russian.), melamine cyanurate is considered to be more toxic than either melamine or cyanuric acid alone.

Could it be that melamine is wrongfully accused?

I did a further reading to do justice to this case in my mind. I also read a United Nations Environment Programme report that shows the low toxicity nature of melamine in foods. I am not a chemist and I will not pretend and interpret the data there. However, the Conclusions and Recommendations says

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Quote:

Environment:

The toxicity of the chemical to aquatic organisms is low. PEC/PNEC ratios are below 1 when based on realistic worst case conditions and on monitored concentrations. Therefore, melamine is currently considered of low potential risk and low priority for further work.

Health:

The toxicity of melamine is low. Repeated exposure resulted in urinary bladder stones and other lesions of the urinary tract. Bladder tumours occured only in male rats after prolonged irritation of the epithelium by the bladder stones. Melamine is not genotoxic. The exposure of workers and consumers is low. Therefore, melamine is currently considered of low potential risk and low priority for further work.

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I went to section 4.2.2 of that report that dealt with repeated dose toxicity and it goes,

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Six studies with rats, oral administration of melamine with the feed and dosing periods of 14 days to 3 months are available. Additional studies with mice and also rather old studies with intraperitoneal administration, and rabbits and dogs were also reported. Summarised findings of the different studies are: Depression of body weight gain and elevated water intake were observed at higher doses of   ca. 500 mg.kg-1.d-1. The target organ system is the urinary tract. Melamine has a diuretic effect, it produces urinary bladder stones (urolithiasis), hyperplastic epithelial changes of the urinary bladder and calcerous deposits in the proximal kidney tubules. In mice ulceration as well as hyperplasias of the bladder occurred. Changes in the urinary bladder were noted in the studies depending on the dose and the species used. A GLP 28 days study in rats ( 19 ) to evaluate urolithiasis indicated a dose dependent incidence of urinary bladder calculi and hyperplasia.The rat and especially the male rat is more susceptible than the mouse.

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If this is the case, does it mean that the guilty companies could have added such a large amount of melamine in our milk that it has become toxic?

Why put melamine in milk

How did melamine find its way in infants' milk? This story of sick Chinese infants isn't the first fatal health issue in China. If you can remember about a year ago, United States had a pet food scare when it was found out that dogs and cats' food contained melamine. It was told that this chemical is to be blamed for the death of some and sickness of thousands of pets. The FDA has identified some of the ingredients were made in China (Source).

According to New York Times Beijing, melamine was added to foods to make them appear higher in protein and have more nutritional value. 

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Producers trying to cut costs often dilute milk with water, which lowers the nutrition level. But the addition of melamine, which is high in nitrogen, helps the milk appear to meet nutrition standards by artificially raising its protein count.

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The University of Maine Food Science and Human Nutrition Department's Brian Perkins said that 

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Qoute

“In the late 1970's, Italian researches completed a study that showed that 70 percent of fish and meat meal contained melamine,” Perkins explained. “By 1988 these researchers showed the number of melamine-positive fish and meat meals was reduced to about 5 percent. This indicates that melamine may have been in our animal feeds for some time, but hopefully not in food for human consumption.”

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I am quite confused. If melamine in food is nothing new, then, relatively, it might not be toxic or else, these fatalities could have occured during the last three decades that the tainting is being done. There are a lot of newspapers that identified (directly or indirectly) melamine to be the culprit in these deaths and illness but I have never read any report that actually identified the actual concentration of melamine in any these food products. 

Image from University of Guelph

The electron microscope image above shows crystals of the type found in the urinary tracts of cats affected by pet food contaminants. The report I read in an article from Cornell University, there was no direct link between melamine and what happened to the pets.

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Qoute:

Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine Dean Donald Smith joined a panel of experts at a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) March 30 press conference in Washington, D.C., to announce that both Cornell and the FDA had independently identified a contaminant called melamine in samples of recalled pet food and in suspect wheat gluten used in its manufacture. Melamine is a chemical used in plastics.

During the press conference, which was shown on CNN, Smith displayed photographs of the urinary tract crystals from affected animals that have been seen by clinicians and pathologists in many parts of the country, and he also showed a microscopic image of an affected kidney. However, Smith emphasized, Cornell researchers have not been able to match the known toxic effects of melamine with all of the clinical and pathologic signs observed in affected cats and dogs. He specifically referred to signs of acute damage to the tubules and the characteristic pattern of cellular inflammation that have been seen in affected kidneys.

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The Chinese dairy companies knew for months the melamine contamination

I love milk even if I am lactose intolerant. Lately, I have been hearing about this melamine thing in milk products, another dairy thing and news about this exploded like a bomb. I had just read the report from the Associated Press that the number of sick children in China had already jumped to nearly 53, 000 (May-August records). 

AP Photo

I do not know what melamine is. The report explained it to me:

Melamine, used to make plastics and fertilizer, has been found in infant formula and other milk products from 22 of China's dairy companies. Suppliers trying to cut costs are believed to have added it to watered-down milk because its high nitrogen content masks the resulting protein deficiency.

Li Changjiang, head of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine since 2001, had resigned a year after he and the government promised to overhaul the system in response to a series of product safety scares. He stepped down when investigators revealed that the Sanlu Group Co., the biggest producer of powdered milk in China, had received complaints regarding the illnesses in babies being blamed on its infant formula as early as December 2007! Months later, tests show that the milk was indeed tainted with the industrial chemical melamine which causes kidney stones and can lead to kidney failure. The report also read

Even then, Sanlu delayed ordering a product recall until Sept. 11, after the close of the Beijing Summer Olympics and in the face of rising concern from New Zealand partner Fonterra, which owns a 43 percent share in Sanlu.

Note that Sanlu received complaints since December 2007 but it won an industry award in January and featured on state TV last fall as a domestic company with tight quality controls!

According to The Huffington Post, there are at least 3 children who have died and more than 1,300 are in hospitals dozens of them are suffering from acute kidney failure.