Macau, China, 26 Sept – The Macau Department of Health said Thursday it identified three more products in Macau with melamine, a toxic substance that has already killed four children in China, increasing the total number of products containing the chemical to eight.
After discovering that Yili milk, Yili strawberry-flavoured yoghurt, Mengniu nut-flavoured milk and two batches of Yili skim milk enriched with calcium contained melamine, today three more products were confirmed as having the substance.
According to the list that was released, the Macau Department of Health, together with Macau Economic Services, analysed 96 samples of products on sale in Macau and identified the following products as having melamine: Lotte Chocolate Snack Koala, Monmilk breakfast milk malt beverage and Nestlé Neslac powdered milk for children over a year old.
In these three products, the following quantities of the substance were found, respectively: 24 milligrams per kg, 2.35 milligrams per kg and 1 milligram per kg.
According to information released by the Macau authorities, the US Food & Drug Administration states that the tolerable daily human intake of melamine is 0.63 milligrams per kg of body weight.
The Macau Department of Health said preliminary urine tests were performed Thursday on 403 students that participated in the Macau Department of Education’s milk programme for the 2007/2008 school year.
The Macau Department of Health, also known as the Macau Health Bureau, is going to perform tests on around 10,000 students from primary schools and day care centres.
Meanwhile, 326 people went to health centres to perform tests, and some complementary tests to identify melamine were carried out, though these came up negative for kidney stones.
Up until now one16-month old child that drank powdered milk was identified as having kidney stones and is receiving hospital treatment.
Recently it was made public that milk products produced by at least 22 Chinese companies contained melamine, a chemical substance that is rich in nitrogen and affects the urinary system.
To date melamine has killed four babies and around 53,000 children have been poisoned in China. Of this amount, around 13,000 have been hospitalised, 104 of them are in serious condition, and another 40,000 are under medical observation.
(MacauNews)
