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I guess I should say something about this compound, since I mentioned it in my last post and I'm a chemistry major. Melamine is an organic base and a trimer of cyanamide. This melamine is apparently in much of the headlines of both local and international news, more famous for the "poisonous milk" that made many many babies develop kidney stones and at least 4 died from consumption of melamine tainted milk power.



Actually the China manufacturers had been doing this for a long time, it was kind of an open secret in the food industry, especially in the manufacturing of protein content products like dairy processed products, fertilizers, and even baby milk powder. Melamine may 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% nitrogen by mass), , 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.

When this isnt even the fault of the milk farmers. It is really a sad sight to see them drain away their fresh milk like water, because of the lack of confidence of the citizens in the dairy products after the scandel.

Melamine itself as a monomer is not harmful, but when it gets into our body it reacts and combines with cyanuric acid to give melamine cyanurate.

This beautiful structure here can coagulate as they form 3 hydrogen bond with each other, thus becoming a very stable structure. (If you want to know how stable they are, think DNA. Each DNA monomer has 2-3 H-hond interaction with the complimentary backbone). It is not a salt, due to the hydrogen linkage, yet it forms spike like crystals in aqueous solution. Yes and this is the extremely stable giant molecular structure that is found to cause the kidney stones in the babies that drank the tainted milk powder.

So stable, it is not readily excreted by the body. You wouldnt want to have this stuff in your body. There are still pretty much more interesting chemistry about this melamine cyanurate, but I'm kinda tired and I still got organic midterm quiz on Thursay, so perhaps I will scrible some more stuffs up here soon.

End of chemistry lessons kids=) Isnt chemistry wonderful? I can deduce how to synthesis drugs now, like panadol blah blah blah, its just that I need to equipments. Ok I shall quit bragging and start mugging =.=