The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday announced a tolerable daily intake (TDI) for melamine, the chemical found recently in contaminated milk products.

The TDI for melamine should be limited to 0.2 mg per kilogram of body weight. This means a person who weighs 50 kg can tolerate up to 10 mg melamine per day, the UN agency said in a statement.

In the meanwhile, WHO stressed that melamine is a contaminant that should not be in food, although sometimes it is unavoidable.

So the above-mentioned "tolerable" level of melamine should not be seen as a "safe" level, it pointed out.

TDI represents the tolerable amount of unavoidable contaminant in food that a person can ingest on a daily basis without appreciable health risk, it added.

The TDI for melamine is the outcome of an expert meeting organized by WHO this week in Ottawa, Canada. It is lower than previous TDIs suggested for melamine by some national food safety authorities.

"We expect this could better guide the authorities in protecting the health of their public," said Dr Jorgen Schlundt, WHO director for food safety.

(Xinhua News Agency December 7, 2008)