Melamine ( C3H6N6 ) vs. Kidney stones

This is the milk collecting spot where the melamine were dosed starting from here...

Last month (September 2008), there are several milk companies which were implicated in a milk scandal and their sources of milk had been adulterated with melamine leading to kidney stones. WHO and the UN Food & Agriculture Organization urged affected countries to ensure safe feeding of millions of infants following those ongoing melamine milk crises in China. In addition to milk's products, it's also possible widely spreading in our dairy products.

Let's review the chemical structure of melamine first. (quoted from Wikipedia)

Formula: Melamine is an organic base and a trimer of cyanamide, with a 1,3,5-triazine skeleton. Like cyanamide, it contains 66% nitrogen by mass and, if mixed with resins, has fire retardant properties due to its release of nitrogen gas when burned or charred, and has several other industrial uses, especially melamine resin with formaldehyde. Melamine by itself is nontoxic in low doses, but when combined with cyanuric acid it can cause fatal kidney stones due to the formation of an insoluble melamine cyanurate.

Illegl dosing: Melamine is sometimes illegally added to food products in order to increase the apparent protein content. Standard tests such as the Kjeldahl and Dumas tests estimate protein levels by measuring the nitrogen content, so they can be misled by adding nitrogen-rich compounds such as melamine.

Investing your health is always pays off. That's why I drink lowfat milk every day. Alas, I have drank the local Shanghai's milk for 3 years and I decided I will quit drinking milk when stay in China.

Milk crises in China: Melamine have been added to fool government protein content tests after water was added to fraudulently dilute the milk. Because of melamine's high nitrogen content (66% by mass versus approx. 10-12% for typical protein ), it can cause the protein content of food to appear higher than the true value. Officials estimate that about 20 percent of the dairy companies tested in China sell products tainted with melamine.