I woke up this morning thinking about triclosan. Very weird. I became aware of it only a few months ago, and have been amazed to see lists of all the places where it pops up. I’ve never been terribly excited about the antibacterial craze, but I used to think antibacterial handsoap was a good idea, especially with so many kids. Not so. Triclosan, the ingredient that kills most of the bacteria, is a pesticide. Yep, a pesticide. And you can find it in antibacterial coatings, soap, deoderant, and even toothpaste. Why would anyone want to put pesticide in their mouth? Yuck. If that isn’t gross enough for you, consider this: Triclosan mixed with chlorine (ya know, like in a lot of people’s tap water) equals chloroform. Yummy, huh?

But don’t take my word for it, check out what the CDC has to say about triclosan, including the increased risk of developing allergies in children.

So there I was, waking up this morning, thinking of triclosan. Not a great way to start the day. I logged onto my computer with a cup of coffee in hand and found that melamine–the same stuff that killed all those pets back in 2007–has made its way into some Nestle milk made in China. It is the same stuff that was in Chinese-made baby formula a few months back when thousands of babies were sickened, and some died.

This post about melamine in milk explains why it would be found in food at all:

So why on earth would any but the most malicious people stick melamine in milk? The reason is that melamine has the ability to fudge the numbers and make products appear to have more protein in them than they actually do. Melamine doesn’t actually contain protein, but by increasing the nitrogen levels, it fools the tests used to gauge protein into thinking there’s more of the good stuff than there actually is.

Now the milk that is currently contaminated is made for catering use. I wonder if that means you would get it in restaurants or restaurant supply stores. China Daily reported

A sample of pure milk was found to contain melamine. The product was Nestle Dairy Farm Pure Milk (Catering use only) (1L) and the level of melamine detected was 1.4 ppm.

“Based on the low level detected, normal consumption will not pose major health effects. However, it is not advisable for small children to consume the milk product,” a CFS spokesman said.

Yeah, count me out too.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.