Truemors
The World Health Organization, in a meeting in Ottawa this past week, has now set up a tolerable daily intake (TDI) standard for melamine in food and drink.
The World Health Organization says an international meeting of experts in Ottawa has established what is the tolerable daily intake for the chemical that has contaminated milk products around the world.
The WHO says the meeting has set a more strict limit for melamine than what has been suggested by some national food safety authorities. It said in a statement Friday that the tolerable level has been established at 0.2 milligrams of melamine per kilogram of body weight. That means a 110-pound, or 50-kilogram, person could tolerate 10 mg of melamine per day.
The WHO stressed it has not set a "safe" level for melamine, a contaminant that should not be in food but sometimes is unavoidable.
"We expect this could better guide the authorities in protecting the health of their public," said WHO Director for Food Safety, Dr. J. Schlundt, at the closing of the WHO Expert Meeting. In other words, we are still at the mercy of our country's FDA, to set limits on food products.
Here's a statement put out by the Department of Health in Taiwan in response to the findings:
“The WHO’s suggestion [of a melamine TDI] is important for us. But to set up a TDI in Taiwan, we need to take into consideration the eating habits of Taiwanese ... and the quantity of food consumption,” DOH spokesman Wang Je-chau said.
China says the tainted milk scandal has likely caused 6 infant deaths and sickened another 300,000.
More melamine realated articles here.
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