简介:Introduction
In 2007, several pet food manufacturers recalled their products
after finding melamine contamination, which caused serious
illnesses in animals that consumed the food. In a follow up
investigation, the U简介:Introduction
In 2007, several pet food manufacturers recalled their products
after finding melamine contamination, which caused serious
illnesses in animals that consumed the food. In a follow up
investigation, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and
the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) found melamine
and related compounds, cyanuric acid, ammeline and ammelide
(Figure 1), in various food and feed ingredients, including
bakery meal, pet food, swine, poultry and fish feed (1). In
September 2008, it was reported that milk products, especially
infant formula, were contaminated with melamine in China.
The melamine sickened at least 60,000 infants across the
country and killed at least 4. Allegedly, melamine was added to
the milk formula and other vegetable protein products, such as
wheat gluten and rice protein, to artificially increase the
apparent protein levels due to its high nitrogen content.
Although melamine itself may have low or no toxicity, it is
believed that melamine and related compounds will form
insoluble crystals in urine, causing kidney stones and eventual
acute renal failure (2).
Consequently, the US FDA developed a GC/MS method for the
screening and confirmation of melamine and related
compounds (1). However the method was not evaluated for
quantitative analysis. In this note, we evaluated and developed
a method using the Varian 220-MS ion trap mass spectrometer
(Figure 2) to determine melamine and related compounds
qualitatively and quantitatively based on the framework of the
original FDA method.详细>