Melamine in the Global Food Supply

While melamine in the mainstream media seems to have quietened down in the last few days, there are still a few of us in the blogosphere attempting to unravel the tangle.

I first reported in my melamine in milk article (September 17) how the news broke that babies in China were somehow being poisoned by a contaminant in their formula milk powder. The contaminant was identified as melamine, an organic compound high in nitrogen and specifically amine groups that can dupe protein test equipment into thinking a product is rich in protein when it is not. Of course, the addition of non-nutritional organic compounds may fool the machine, but it does not fool the body of anyone eating the substance in their food and they will either be poisoned if the compound is itself toxic or suffer malnutrition. Infants, one might expect, would be particularly susceptible as they usually rely on a single food stuff – formula milk – for all their dietary requirements if they are not being breast-fed.

Nephrologist Robert Weiss, whom I interviewed for a follow-up item on the melamine toxicity article, told me that it is common to test for proteins using a simple test that detects amino groups (proteins are composed of amino acids). “Many non-protein compounds contain amino groups also (melamine is just one of those compounds). Some tests for proteins also are positive with ammonia, nitrates, and urea,” she says. “Unfortunately, none of these compounds can be used nutritionally speaking by animals or humans which ingest these compounds to build proteins. Therefore, these compounds have no nutritional value, are actually toxic and have no business being added to feed.”

One might suspect that manufacturers of these compounds as well as manufacturers of feed have learned how to outwit the somewhat simplistic tests for proteins that regulators use. “In learning how to outwit the tests in the interest of making a buck they have endangered the global food supply,” adds Weiss. It would be very interesting to know which companies are engaged in these practices or which are buying feed ingredients from companies engaged in such activities and so giving rise to the likes of the melamine contaminated food list. Perhaps this is simply an insidious symptom of the impending global recession, which is, as all recessions seem to be, founded on greed.

Weiss, who has ten years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry and is well aware of the chain of documentation required for drug production is “really amazed that we have less knowledge and control over ingredients and processing events in many of our foods.” Either way, the issue must be investigated and brought aggressively to the attention of legislators as well as consumers.

Anti Cocaine, Heroin Test, and Excited Brains

heroin-userThe latest issue of my SpectroscopyNOW column is now online. In this issue, having sampled a little cannabis chemistry last month, I turned to cocaine, and enzymes to beat addiction, and new techniques for testing the purity, or otherwise of street heroin.

Anti cocaine – A mutant enzyme that breaks down cocaine in the bloodstream 2000 times faster than the body’s natural enzymes could lead to a rapid-response treatment for acute overdose or lead to a new therapeutic approach to treating drug addiction.

Testing times for street heroin – Impure forms of illicit drugs are almost as big a problem as the drugs themselves. Now, researchers in Spain have used diffuse reflectance near-infrared spectroscopy (DR-NIR) to quickly determine the purity of heroin.

Sooty balloons – Nothing more sophisticated than a lump of graphite, a roll of sticky tape, and a wafer thin sliver of silica are needed to inflate ideas about nanochemistry. Raman spectroscopy and other techniques have been used to reveal the details of the DIY construction of a balloon-like membrane of graphene.

Stellar chemistry – Astroscientists are using various spectroscopic techniques to root out relatively complex molecules lurking in the interstellar medium. The complexity of naphthalene, discovered in space, and corannulene, could provide new evidence of a cosmic origin for the precursor molecules of life on Earth

Analytical compromise reveals protein folding secrets – A new X-ray technique, time-resolved wide-angle X-ray scattering (TR-WAXS) could defeat even high-field NMR spectroscopy in allowing researchers to monitor very fast, nanosecond-scale movements in the context of the overall three-dimensional protein structure.

Finally, this week, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has revealed a reason why the excitement of unwrapping presents dwindles as our brains get older and more jaded. According to a new study, a biochemical pathway is responsible for mellowing our expectations. I cannot say I’ve noticed to be honest, I still get just as excited as the kids at Christmas unwrapping presents…although I’ve moved on from playing with the packaging now, most times.

To effectively reverse any harmful heroin addiction, a patient must undergo detoxification and treatment.

Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2008

The Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2008 was awarded to Osamu Shimomura (b. 1928) of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), at Woods Hole, Massachusetts and Boston University Medical School, Martin Chalfie (b. 1947) of Columbia University, New York, and Roger Tsien (b. 1952) of the University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, “for the discovery (1962 by Shimomura) and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP”. Important, of course, and congratulations to all three…but I just knew it would be bio again!

The Nobel org press release for the Chemistry Prize can be found here.

The remarkable brightly glowing green fluorescent protein, GFP, was first observed in the beautiful jellyfish, Aequorea victoria in 1962. Since then, this protein has become one of the most important tools used in contemporary bioscience. With the aid of GFP, researchers have developed ways to watch processes that were previously invisible, such as the development of nerve cells in the brain or how cancer cells spread. Of course, the things that the public know about GFP are the green-glowing mice and pigs that have hit the tabloid headlines over the years.

I’ve written about green fluorescent proteins (although not green fluorescent proteins) on several occasions over the years. Briefly in an item on artificial cells in December 2004. In Reactive Reports in September 2005. In New Scientist (“Genetic Weeding and Feeding for Tobacco Plants”, Jan. 4, 1992, p. 11). In SpectroscopyNOW in January 2008. And, more substantially, in American Scientist (January 1996) on the use of a green-glowing jellyfish protein to create a night-time warning signal for crop farmers. Plants under stress would activate their GFP genes and start glowing, revealing which areas of which fields were affected by disease or pests and so tell the farmer where to spray. Of course, the idea of green-glowing cereals would have any tabloid headline writer spluttering into their cornflakes of a morning.

As I said earlier in the week, on the post for the Nobel Prize for Medicine 2008 and on the Nobel Prize for Physics announcement yesterday, the Nobel press team has employed various social media gizmos to disseminate the news faster than ever before, including SMS, RSS, widgets (see left), and twitter.

You can check back here later in the week and next week for the Literature, Economics, and Peace Prizes, the widget at the top left of this post will provide the details as soon as they are released. It’s almost as exciting as sniping your bids on eBay.

Melamine and Kidney Failure

Kidney showing marked pallor of the cortexSciencebase readers following the melamine story and concerned about melamine contaminated foods, will hopefully be interested in the latest expert opinion on the scandal.

Roberta Weiss, a nephrologist (kidney doctor) emailed to provide Sciencebase readers with some more background on melamine contamination and toxicity. Weiss suggests that, “Probably acute renal failure resulting from cyanuric acid crystal formation in the kidneys of babies that ingested the melamine contaminated formula was responsible for the infant deaths, not kidney stone formation.”

Weiss is a kidney doctor for adults, but emphasises that she has never seen a case of melamine related kidney or bladder stones. However, there have been animal studies carried out since the 1980s that do demonstrate that the ingestion of melamine by mice can cause bladder stones, known technically as urolitiasis. These are apparently associated with ulcerations in the bladder. Weiss adds that the animal food tainted with melamine that killed so many pets in the US contained products in the feed from China.

As I’ve mentioned here before, melamine is an organic compound used in the manufacture of plastics and fertilizers. It releases cyanide when burned and has been associated with cyanide poisoning in industrial accidents. Melamine monomer, as opposed to the plastic used to make kitchen utensils and table coverings, itself also has irritant properties. It has been added to various food products to illicitly and fraudulently boost the measured protein content without the expense of actually improving the food’s nutritional value.

According to The Register, Chinese company, Xuzhou Anying, was advertising “dust of melamine” as something it called “ESB protein powder” on the global market trading website, Alibaba. “The latest product, ESB protein powder, which is researched and developed by Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co., Ltd… Contains protein 160 – 300 percent, which solves the problem for shortage of protein resource,” it boasted. A horrifying thought, makes you wonder what is actually in those nasty protein powder drinks bodybuilders use.

“Melamine ingestion results in the production of cyanuric acid in the kidneys,” adds Weiss, “which results in intratubular crystal formation and acute renal failure.” This, she explains occurred in cats who were fed melamine in combination with cyanuric acid experimentally after the pet food issues to demonstrate what may have been happening during that incident.

According to Economics And Finance (Cai Jing) magazine, as reported in the Epoch Times, it is common practice to add melamine to livestock feed along with sodium nitrite, urea, ammonia, silica, potassium nitrate, sodium nitrite, glacial acetic acid, activated carbon materials, urea, ammonia, potassium nitrate, to improve its nutritional profile and other properties of the feed. The use of melamine in this context contravenes international regulations where they exist.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) points out that, “Regulation regarding its use in animal feed do not always exist as it is only recent events which indicated the need to regulate for this substance. However, some countries have established regulations and do not permit the use of melamine in animal feed.” Indeed, the FAO specifically states: “Melamine is not permitted in food or feed stuffs.”

Nevertheless, the FAO says, melamine is often used in agricultural fertilisers. But, has also warned that the commonly used pesticide cyromazine can break down to form melamine (PDF document). This might also explain why melamine has been found in lettuce, water cress, tomatoes, mushrooms, potatoes and other agricultural products in China. Contamination levels are very low at 17 milligrams of melamine per kilogram of mushrooms, for instance. They are notably low compared to the levels of melamine found in contaminated infant formula milk, which were as high as 2560 milligrams per kilogram of ready-to-eat product. The levels of cyanuric acid in these products is unknown.

Sciencebase regular “Offy” pointed me to the North Korean publication The Daily NK, which asks whether there were melamine deaths in 2005. “According to merchants trading between China and North Korea, the Chinese Melamine-tainted milk affair started in Pyongyang in the summer of 2005. At the time, infants who ate imported Chinese powdered milk fell unconscious and, in more serious cases, died.” At the time, the North Korean authorities tested imported Chinese milk and banned it on the basis of their findings.

Because of the pet food problem, pet owners like Offy, have been following this stayed on this for well over a year. “Politics has trumped health in favour of industry for a very long time in the US…it’s not just a problem in China,” she says. Cai Jing blames a lack of supervision for the melamine crisis and suggests an approach that will allow China’s fledgling market economy to continue to grow but at the same time minimising the chances of a similar scandal occurring again. It says that the melamine milk crisis has taught China that government oversight to spot corruption is essential, but it also suggests that the government not be allowed to simply meddle with the market. This would, Cai Jing says, be the only way to ensure a safe food industry.

  • Why is melamine in baby formula, your food — and your pets’ meals?
  • Major Chinese supermarket chain in Canada pulls yogurt drinks from shelves
  • T&T; Supermarkets pulls yogurt drinks from shelves
  • China: 12 more arrests in tainted milk case

Herbal Highs and Lows

Structure of cathinoneOnce again, the BBC is reporting on herbal highs. This time, it tells us that while most legal high pills are based on a group of drugs called piperazines, of which BZP (benzyl piperazine) is the most common and will be banned in the UK under a European directive, it is cathinone, the active ingredient in the plant khat, a widely used stimulant in East Africa that is the focus of today’s news. Cathinone is beta-ketoamphetamine.

Although so-called “legal highs” are marketed as a safe alternative to illegal, classified drugs, they are not without risks. “A high heart rate, high temperature, high blood pressure, and more severe effects such as heart attacks and strokes,” can happen, consultant toxicologist Paul Dargan, clinical director of the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Poisons Unit London, told the BBC.

Worryingly, there various legal herbal highs available that claim not to contain the likes of BPZ, but toxicologists frequently find these potentially lethal compounds in such products.

There a dozen compounds being black-marketed widely, the law hasn’t caught them all yet, but, says the BBC, legal doesn’t mean safe.

Nobel Prize for Physics 2008

The Nobel Prize for Physics 2008 is announced here Tuesday, October 7.

The Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Yoichiro Nambu (born 1921) of the Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago “for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics” and to Makoto Kobayashi (b. 1944) of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) Tsukuba, Japan, and Toshihide Maskawa (b. 1940) of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP), Kyoto University Kyoto, “for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature”. You can read the full press release from the Nobel org here.

As I mentioned in my previous post on the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology item, yesterday, the team, led by Simon Frantz have been using modern web 2.0 type technologies, including RSS and twitter to get the word out to journalists as fast as they can. Part of the reason, apparently, was to save journalists from suffering serious F5 button finger strain at announcement time.

Anyway, here’s the twitter update page – Nobel tweets. They also created a neat little widget so that we could embed the timetable into a website (see left). As you can see, the 2008 Nobel Prize for Chemistry will be announced Wednesday October 8. I’m hoping once again for some straight chemistry, rather than bio-flavoured molecules, as this will give me a chance to get my teeth into my journalistic alma mater as it were.

Mobile Internet Insecurities

ipv6-readyMost internet users will be unaware and unconcerned by the computer science and technology that underpins their daily web surfing, emails, chats, and Twitter updates. But, there are, of course, thousands of incredibly bright people working behind the scenes to make the internet work. One aspect of the backroom work that goes on, is the development of the software systems that carry the packets of information across the internet, whether that’s to open a web page in your browser, connect your net phone to a friend across the ocean, or trap spam on its way to your inbox.

At the moment, the internet is mainly running on a system known as Internet Protocol version 4, or IPv4. Version 4 was first mooted in 1981, years before the Web was invented and certainly long before broadband, Youtube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and VoIP entered the public consciousness. What IPv4 does is to try and deliver the packets of information across a network. It’s imperfect, because it doesn’t ensure the packets are delivered in the right order, or even that they are delivered at all. In fact, it is known technically as a “best effort” protocol. As such, IPv4 requires another layer over the top of it that makes sure all packets are delivered and sorts them into the correct order before they are used to render a web page, download an email, or Tweet that Plurk.

Another disadvantage of IPv4 is that it can handle a mere 232 addresses. That may seem like a huge number, but work it out and it actually only comes to well over four billion. However, with billions more people on the planet, millions of organisations, collectives and companies, one can see that 232 is rather a small number if everyone wants an internet address.

IPv5 IPv6, Internet Protocol version 6 hopes to remedy all these problems. First off, it can handle 2128, that’s about 3.4×1038*, internet addresses. Even with population growth the way it is, we are unlikely to ever need quite so many addresses, at least in the foreseeable future. Moreover, this added addressing capacity solves in one fell swoop almost all the network management and routing issues seen with IPv4, which means once it is widely adopted the whole of the internet will be rendered much, much more efficient.

However, while IPv4 has been in place for decades and IPv6 is not even quite fully packaged up and ready for delivery, researchers are already spotting security flaws in IPv6. Writing in the International Journal of Internet Protocol Technology, a team in New Zealand has highlighted several security issues that developers and device users may face once IPv6 goes online, particularly across the mobile internet. With every third person using a Blackberry, an iPhone, a Google Android phone or similar, mobile security will soon rise to the top of the agenda for hackers, crackers, and those who seek to defeat them.

Michael Dürr and Ray Hunt of the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand, explain that in parallel with the design and development of IPv6, run several protocol extensions for mobile support, which are labelled MIPv6.

Over the last decade, access network technologies available to connect stationary as well as mobile devices to the internet have reached a remarkable diversity. Wireless systems such as Bluetooth, 802.11x, GSM, UMTS and WiMAX have shown very significant development and each individually can provide reasonable internet connectivity with more or less acceptable data rates.

However, the different characteristics of each technology means that an overarching MIPv6 to unite them all in a way that is transparent to users is now needed. Sciencetext has previously covered the issue of connecting 3G devices to wi-fi networks for instance. Such unity in always-on connectivity across disparate, interwoven networks, brings new security challenges not yet addressed by the underlying protocols. The various insecurities all boil down to attacker Charlie eavesdropping on Alice and Bob, sabotaging their connection, changing the information being sent between Alice and Bob, or causing a denial of service to prevent Alice and Bob communicating at all. The various insecurities fall into the following categories all of which are technically feasible with the current state of MIPv6:

  • Address theft is a security attack where Charlie pretends to be a certain node at a given address and attempts to steal traffic from Alice destined for Bob.
  • Secrecy and integrity attacks involve Charlie pretending to be Bob and intercepting the new connection between Alice and Bob and possibly changing the information being sent between Alice and Bob.
  • Replay attacks involve Charlie impersonating a mobile node and redirecting Alice and Bob’s traffic with malicious intent.
  • Flooding attacks involve Charlie redirecting traffic from one or more nodes to an arbitrary internet address.
  • Binding update attacks let Charlie exploit the strong authentication mechanisms in the IPv6 technology to trigger a denial of service (DoS) so that Alice and Bob can no longer connect.
  • Reflection attacks trick suitable nodes, called reflectors, into sending data packets from Alice and Bob to Charlie’s address.

Some threats will remain too expensive for the cyber-saboteur to consider, but intrinsically, “IPv6 cannot guarantee overall security due to its inherent architectural characteristics,” the researchers explain:

IPv6 (as well as its predecessor, IPv4) are based on a routing infrastructure, that must be trusted. The protocol itself can only be regarded as secure as the routing infrastructure constituting the internet.

By highlighting the insecurities of MIPv6, the researchers hope to provide insights into how risks and potential attacks could be limited. “Some security risks can only be mitigated, but not completely removed,” they say.

Michael Durr, Ray Hunt (2008). An analysis of security threats to mobile IPv6 International Journal of Internet Protocol Technology, 3 (2) DOI: 10.1504/IJIPT.2008.020468

*3.4×1038 is the number 34 followed by 37 zeroes: 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (340 billion, billion, billion, billion)

Nobel Prize for Medicine 2008

This year the Nobel committee has awarded the Prize for Physiology or Medicine to Harald zur Hausen for his discovery of human papilloma viruses (HPV) causing cervical cancer and to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The announcement was made via the Nobel organisation’s Twitter page and on their site.

zur Hausen (born 1936) works at the German Cancer Research Centre Heidelberg. Barré-Sinoussi (born 1947) is at the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Unit, Virology Department, Institut Pasteur Paris, France and Montagnier (born 1932) is at the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention also in Paris. The full press release for the announcement of the Medicine Prize is here. Where’s Robert Gallo in all this one wonders?

You can get up to the minute alerts on the chemistry, physics, and other Nobels announced later this week via the Nobel site and their new alerting systems with SMS, RSS, Twitter and more (thanks to new publicity guy and friend of Sciencebase Simon Frantz and his colleagues).

nobel-medalYou can find the iGoogle gadget for the Prizes here. There’s a news widget here and the Nobel RSS is here.

Physics is announced October 7 (dark energy/dark matter perhaps?), Chemistry (another aspect of biology, no doubt) October 8, Literature on Thursday, we give Peace a chance on Friday, finally the Economics Prize on Monday 13th (hopefully it won’t go to a merchant banker, given the state of the global economy at the moment). You can get a list of past winners of the Nobel Prize for Medicine here and the Nobel announcement here.

Chillis and Cancer

Capsaicin structureIf you’ve ever worried that a steaming hot bowl of chili or cajun chicken might be doing you more harm than good, then you’re not alone. Research earlier this decades pointed out that capsaicin (the “hot” compound in red hot chili peppers) and safrole (the hot molecule in black pepper) could both be carcinogenic.

Thankfully, for lovers of Mexican-American, Cajun, white Creole, black Creole, spicy Indian food, Malaysian, Thai etc etc…the opposite seems to be true. It is more likely that compounds found in spicy foods are good for us. One might wonder how such cuisine could have persisted for countless generations if they weren’t good for us. After all the news just in on saturated animal fat is that even it is better for us than the last 20 years of health scaremongering would have you believe and we have been eating that for countless, countless generations.

Anyway, the BayBlab submission to the Cancer Research Blog Carnival #14 hosted on Sciencebase today, cites the various compounds in spices that are thought to have health-giving properties. These include turmeric (curcumin), red chili (capsaicin), cloves (eugenol), ginger (zerumbone), fennel (anethole), kokum (gambogic acid), fenugreek (diosgenin), and black cumin (thymoquinone). The ability of all these compounds to prevent, rather than cause, cancer has apparently now been established.

So, with your health taken care of, it’s time to turn up the heat and tuck into that chili bowl with a smug, if scorched, look on your face!

Cancer Research Blog Carnival #14

cancer research blog carnivalI don’t know anyone who hasn’t got a cancer story to tell, whether it is personal experience, a relative or friend, or association with their patients or through their research.

Cancer has always been with us, but contrary to the popular image propagated by the mainstream media it is not a simple, nor single disease. In this month’s cancer research blog carnival hosted on the Sciencebase Science Blog, I present a few selected posts from fellow bloggers discussing various aspects of cancer research. Thanks to everyone who submitted a cancer research post.

First up is PalMD on the Denialism blog who explains that cancer is the second leading cause of death, in the US at least, and confirms the ubiquity of the disease as 4% of the population is directly affected (think six degrees of separation type networks to see how almost all of us can have a cancer story to tell). The post provides answers to some of the LAQs (least asked questions) and FAQs (frequently asked questions about cancer. A post from Stephan Grindley augments the cancer 101 with a straightforward commentary on breast cancer prevention and detection.

According to Charles Daney on Science & Reason, recent studies are making it increasingly apparent that cancer is really many different diseases and he explains how this means a new approach to understanding cancer at the molecular level.

More particularly covering cancer research, GrrlScientist offers an interesting take on the genetics of colour and cancer in Behold The Pale Horse and BayBlab discusses a recent publication in the journal Science on the subject of trans splicing and chromosomal translocations as well as the connection between chilis and cancer – preventative or protagonist?

HighlightHealth, meanwhile, discusses the implications of a large-scale, multi-dimensional analysis of the genomic characteristics of glioblastoma, the most common primary brain tumour in adults. On Hematopoiesis, we learn how travelling normal and malignant cells decide where to stay and on get linked up to five great talks from the experts.

Cancer vaccines are big news and none more so than the vaccine being offered to young girls to protect them from cervical cancer caused by HPV. Health blogger Grace Filby has posted on why this vaccination campaign is not a good idea given the lack of safety data currently available.

Orna Ross tells us about the good things she has gained from having cancer/ and points out that fighting cancer as if it were a battle is not the only approach to tackling the disease. Actorlicious meanwhile provides a star-studded perspective and how the famous and infamous are standing up to cancer.

A post from the University of Oxford science blog on exploiting the Achilles’ heel of cancer, describes how a new approach will lead to treatments with none of the common side effects of cancer therapy. And, Sally Church on the Pharma Strategy blog asks will Abiraterone impact survival in advanced prostate cancer?, the most common carcinoma in men. She also provides a fascinating insight into treating triple negative breast cancer.

Science Metropolis discusses how public health expert Dave Ozonoff hopes to use mathematics and chaos theory to explain paradoxical cancer frequencies, such as those seen in Cape Cod, where rates are 25% higher than the state average in Massachusetts.

Finally, one from the recent Sciencebase archives entitled (hopefully quite controversially) alcohol causes cancer.

Visit the Cancer Carnival site to read past carnivals, to get information on scheduled posts and to find out how to host your own cancer research blog carnival.