Pavlina: Life is Not For the Living

Not trying to stir the pot or start a war here. I did nurse both my children for over a year each. My son had a bit of formula and I want to say the daughter had it once or twice. I never purchased any, I found the free samples I received adequate. I have to travel a lot for my job, and especially during the time when my son was exclusively nursing (pre-solids) I had a hard time stockpiling milk for the longer trips. He would get a bottle or two of formula. Of course it broke my heart, but my milk production was just not as high as it was with my daughter. I remember giving her a bottle when I took her to work to show off and she needed to eat while we were there. Instead of nursing in front of my co-workers, I opted for a bottle of formula, then as soon as we left I nursed her in the car.

Okay, why am I telling you all this anyway? I just ran across this story in my feed. The headline is “Melamine in Infant Formula”. Yikes, that is enough to strike fear in any parent’s heart. The FDA says, “…infant formula with levels of melamine of one of its analogs below 1 ppm does not pose a risk. Previously, FDA had said it could not establish a safe level of melamine for infant formula…” The article then goes on to say that trace levels of melamine and a chemical analog to melamine called cyanuric acid were found in US made infant formula. Apparently trace levels or one or the other pose no safety risk, but the two compounds can bind to each other into a complex that is highly toxic.

I should also quote the article here:

FDA has been testing U.S. infant formula samples for melamine and its analogs ever since contaminated infant formula began showing up in China in September (C&EN, Sept. 29, page 18). Of 74 samples tested so far, FDA detected 0.14 ppm melamine in one formula manufactured by Nestlé Nutrition and 0.25 ppm cyanuric acid in another formula manufactured by Mead Johnson. Those levels are up to 10,000 times lower than the levels reported in the Chinese infant formula scandal.

Oh, and there will be no recall on these because the FDA does not consider these levels to be a risk to infant health.

I know that as a scientist I have to put my trust in organizations such as the FDA and USDA in these matters, but as a parent I still get very nervous reading this type of thing. I believe in the science, and I know that my child probably ingested quite a bit of nylon from the carpet he/she was rolling around on, cat fur, etc. We also used the evil Polycarbonate bottles leaching all the Bispehnol-A, so now my children will no doubt show all the effects from that as well. I did finally manage to getting rid of the polycarbonate and get the new polyester bottles, bit it did take awhile.

Infants seem so small and fragile. There really is something to that as we are assaulted with all the product marketing geared towards that very idea. Sometimes it is easy to forget that formula is made in factories and production lines (just like our meds) that sometime have contamination from one thing or another that will end up in the final product. Even scarier is how much of this final product undergoes testing, then it is easy to see how something like this could happen. As adults, we can “just say no” and not take any meds, but what happens when the FDA does find something harmful in infant formula, or milk, or cheese, or boxed cereal? What then?

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