Lately I’ve sort of gotten hooked on Molecule of the day, an SB chemistry blog. Today the author discusses melamine, a simple compound used in the manufacture of thermally stable plastics like Melmac™ or Bakelite™. There are reports of it being used as a fertilizer, where it got into the wheat gluten manufacture process somehow and ended up causing kidney failure in pets.
Yesterday’s molecule was nitromethane, very cool. But be sure to go back a couple days and read about tertiary butylhydroquinone, which is added to Chicken McNuggets™. If the taste doesn’t make you think twice before ordering them, that molecule will. Not that there’s any risk – McDonald’s uses ‘safe levels’…