Home > Science & Technology > Melamine and your cat

Melamine and your cat

April 5, 2007

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’…

Categories: Science & Technology