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Century: Is Integration Melamine:The danger is still there Science: Turtle shell riddle: 220m-year-
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The melamine food scare is just the tip of an iceberg of problems that compromise ARCHIVE
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food quality today. We ignore the lessons of this terrible episode at our peril,
Mobile Universiti Malaya Medical Centre Deputy Dean Dr Mustafa Ali Mohd tells ELIZABETH Business: Are you on the right track
JOHN. to financial health?
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Local TO conclude the first series of our
BY the time babies in China were falling ill and dying from the effects of melamine- financial education ...
Business tainted infant formula, the synthetic chemical had been in use for well over a century. Full story »

Sports
And during all that time, melamine, present in everything from fertilisers to cookware, DZULKIFLI ABDUL RAZAK:
Parliament carried nothing but a good name. Increasingly lonely Peranakan

World “It is lonely to be a Malaysian.

Packed with nitrogen, it had been used to enrich crops since the 1850s, it was mixed Full story »
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with other chemicals to form flame retardant materials that kept firemen safe and
Property finally, it went into the formulation for kitchenware and countertops used in millions of Science: Space probe freezing to
shops and homes across the globe. death

Op-Ed THE Ulysses solar probe, after 17 years

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It was safe. It was reliable. It was useful. of studying the sun ...
Then in 2007 came the first chink in its armour -- the pet food scare of 2007 when Full story »
thousands of beloved family cats and dogs died a sudden and painful death as a result
of eating contaminated feed. Science: P2RY5 is the cause of hair
loss
In that episode, melamine was singled out and the spotlight trained on the darker side RESEARC HERS have found the genetic
of its use and abuse. basis of two distinct ...
Full story »
When melamine began affecting people - the youngest and most vulnerable - this year,
ELECTION 2008: Dos and don’ts
its dependable little chemical friend image completely and finally gave way to suspicion
and the bad-guy reputation that dogs it today. ONLY a Malaysian citizen, aged above 21
years, who has ...
Full story »
From the first episode, experts learnt that melamine wasn't working on its own.
Nex t »
What they discovered since the 2007 pet food scare is that small amounts of melamine
in the body in it self isn't toxic, says Professor Dr Mustafa Al Mohd.
MOST READ TODAY!
But when it combines in the body with another chemical known as cyanuric acid, it Massive landslide in Bukit Antarabangsa
forms a lethal bond. Bukit Antarabangsa landslide: At least
seven believed still buried
This combination is insoluble in blood. It creates crystals, induces precipitation in the Owner: I told them about erosion
kidney and blocks this organ the way deposits of sand or rust would block a pipe, Landslide site may still be unstable
explained the deputy dean of Universiti Malaya Medical Centre. Bukit Antarabangsa landslide update:
Witness says he heard 'explosion'
This acid is used in the making of melamine.
"In the factory nitrogen is added to cyanuric acid to make melamine. It is supposed to
be converted to melamine but sometimes it doesn't do so completely.
"Some might stay in its original form. So when you take in melamine, you could be
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12/6/2008 The New Straits Times Online.......
Features "Some might stay in its original form. So when you take in melamine, you could be
Travel: Ah, this is the life! taking in a small amount of cyanuric acid as well."

Hear: Faith in the Xmas

Sometimes melamine breaks down to form cyanuric acid in the blood.
spirit
Hear: Scorcher from Jay The acid can also come from other plant materials - because the plant had been fed a
Chou melamine-based fertiliser.
See: A movie with kick
The plant would take up the melamine and convert it into cyanuric acid.
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Widely used and considered non-toxic, the acid can even be found swimming pools
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"In the case of babies in China, they were hit both by the very high level of melamine
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and the combination of the melamine and cyanuric in the body," says Mustafa.
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Another discovery happened purely by chance.
Johor Buzz
Sunday People During the most recent scare when the Universiti Malaya labs were asked to help test
Tech & U biscuit samples for melamine contamination, a hunch Mustafa had, turned out to be
right.
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Travel Mustafa, who heads the Shimadzu-UMMC Centre for Xenobiotics Studies, had been
Spell-It-Right trawling the Net since news of the melamine-related deaths first surfaced.

Zoom Malaysia
From his searches, he found that many of the factories that produced melamine, also
Lost n' Found made other things like pesticides, fertilisers and pharmaceutical products.

So instead of testing the biscuits, Mustafa suggested that manufacturers send all their
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raw materials for testing.
Vijesh Rai on Sports
Run-With-Eve When the results came back, large quantities of melamine was found in the
ammonium bicarbonate or baking soda, which had been imported from China.
On the Movie Trail TEXT A DS
American Idol 2008 "When we checked the factory's website, we found that it also produced melamine, MEN'S PRODUCT : STAY YOUNG &
Zainul Arifin pesticides and fertilisers. We suspect that's how the contamination happened. ENERGETIC

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reason."
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But the main problem was that melamine was everywhere, in so many products. environment
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Then they added melamine to increase the level of nitrogen it in because that's what Agricultural Products Directly From The
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factories would test for to check if the milk had been diluted.
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"Between 1990 and 2000 the melamine production in China grew massive. In fact there
was a surplus in 2000. Buy & Sell In Malaysia
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The scare has also left labs like UM's bogged down with testing and analysis and the
realisation that there just aren't enough hands or specialised machines to go around Skin Centres in Malaysia
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when it comes to this kind of work.
address, doctor names & tel no
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"Malaysia is luckier than many other countries in that know we what the problem is,
what to do about it.

"But melamine is tough to analyse and there aren't many labs that do it here," says
Mustafa who's lab received some 2,000 samples to test.

UM's lab carried out its tests on an LC/MS/MS machine recommended by the World
Health Organisation.

It had just purchased the machine the week before the bad news came out of China.

Real lucky timing, says Mustafa.

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The squarish machine about the size of a 32-inch TV, manufactured by Applied
Biosystems, can run a test in just 10 minutes, but its cost runs into the millions.

"This isn't a plug-and-play machine. We're not talking about a DVD player. It takes a lot
of training to be able to run the analysis and get the machine to do what you want it to,
accurately."

Even if all the labs and machinery were in place, says Mustafa, there wouldn't be
enough manpower, especially to delve deeper into problems.

Those who are working on the testing are so bogged down by their daily routine work
that there's no time to look into research, he says.

And there's a great deal of research to do yet, says the professor, because of the many
shortcuts industry takes.

For instance, studies on the safety of additives and flavours, colours and preservatives
that are widely used today, says Mustafa who considers the melamine problem as just
the tip of iceberg.

"If you buy a butter biscuit today, the ingredients list may say butter and the biscuits may
taste buttery but I'm not so sure it's really butter.

"Butter is expensive. So you wonder how a local manufacturer can afford to sell the
biscuit at such a cheap price."

Food producers don't need to use many materials these days -- cocoa, coffee, butter -
they just need flavouring, says Mustafa.

It's the same with food colouring. There's an abundance of natural plants that can
produce a brilliant red colour but it's easier to use imported food colouring that costs
just RM2.

"How much of an orange juice drink is real orange and where is the vitamin C?" he
asks.

"Do those fish balls really contain fish?"

Economic considerations and general public indifference means these issues get little
attention, argues Mustafa.

But it's the food we eat everyday, colouring and all, that will determine what sort of
population we will have in 50 years' time, he says.

It will also determine the kinds of diseases the country's healthcare will have to deal
with, he adds.

"The melamine scare was a timely wake up call. It shouldn't be wasted."

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