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Dear Ann and the List,

I have been following this discussion on Citric Acid with
great interest.  When the discussion about Chinese citric
acid made from wheat was at it's height, I did a bit of
surfing and found the specifications for this citric acid.
It is sold as the monohydrate and is 99.94% pure citric
acid monohydrate.  This means that in a gram of this
material there is a maximum of 0.6 milligrams of material
which is NOT citric acid monohydrate.  In my view, this
will almost certainly be mostly water but some of our
expert chemists will be able to shoot me down in flames if
my belief is not true.

I work in Radiation Protection where we commonly look at
the "worst case scenario".  We say "It cannot be worse than
this so we will see how bad the problems are using this
definition".  That way we get no nasty surprises.

So lets look at this Citirc Acid from this point of view.
The worst case is if this 0.6 milligrams per gram which is
not citric acid monohydrate is PURE gluten/gliadin (I hope
you will agree that this is very unlikely).

Ingestion (eating, drinking, accidental swallowing etc).

Now there is not inconsiderable evidence of two groups.
Those who are only coeliac and those who are allergic to
wheat (who may or may not be coeliacs as well).

Allergics can respond to TINY quantities of allergens so
they might well be affected even by very small amounts of
citric acid with this level of contamination with
gluten/gliadin.

Coeliacs on the other hand seem to have a minimum level of
a few milligrams of gluten/gliadin per day where no damage
can be demonstrated.  Since one tends not to ingest very
large amounts of citric acid (it is VERY sour) and it is
not usually added in large quantity to foods and drinks,
even the worst case scenario doesn't look too bad.  (eg we
add 1 tbs of citric acid to elderflower cordial - made in 3
litre lots.  This is diluted 10 to 1 before drinking, so 1
large glass - about 300 ml - would hold 30 ml of the
original mix ie 1/100th of the original 1 tbs (which would
have held at most 20 grams of citric acid).  You'd need 5
glasses per day to ingest 1 gram of citric acid).

External (skin) problems.  Quite a lot of coeliacs report
problems with use of external products containing wheat
products.  This is probably an allergic reaction, so if you
are sensitive to things like this, it may make sense not to
use products which might contain even tiny quantities of
gluten/gliadin.  Also remember - it is easy to swallow or
otherwise ingest cosmetics, soap, shampoo, bath salts etc!

Incidentally, I am starting out on a major literature
search on the levels of gliadin/gluten below which there is
no demonstrable harm to coeliacs (including lymphoma).  I
have already read one of the really important papers on
this topic, and that does not exclude eating purified wheat
starch in its definition of gluten free.  There's so much
disinformation on this list that I feel we need someone to
look very closely at this and report back, so I elected me!
Anyone else wanting to get in on the act will be very
welcome as there will most probably be many thousands of
scientific papers to find and read (ie DON'T hold your
breathe waiting for a post on this).

Regards

David

David J Walland
University of Bristol Radiation Protection Adviser
[log in to unmask]
Tel +44 (0)117 928 8323
Fax +44 (0)117 929 1209

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