FDA sets safe level for melamine or cyanuric acid in infant formula

(CNN) - After first saying that they could not determine a threshold for the safe amount of certain toxic chemicals in infant formula, Food and Drug Administration officials said Friday that trace amounts are safe.

Amounts of the industrial chemical melamine or the melamine-like compound called cyanuric acid that are below 1.0 ppm [1000 parts per billion] do not raise public health concerns," Stephen Sundlof, the FDA's Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, told reporters in a conference call.

When it became known in September that thousands of babies in China had been sickened by tainted infant formula, the FDA ordered the testing of U.S.-manufactured infant-formula products.

Sundlof said Friday that results from 74 of 87 samples of infant formula and other products babies and young children had been completed. The agency was waiting for results from 13 other samples.