<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Support the Jubilee 2000 movement. Remove the debt burden from third world countries. See http://www.cafod.org.uk/petition.htm