The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that the industrial chemical melamine is safe in baby formula in small amounts.

More exactly, the agency said “that levels of melamine alone or cyanuric acid alone, at or below 1 part per million in infant formula do not raise public health concerns.”

The announcement comes days after the agency found traces of melamine in samples of top-selling US infant formula. Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA’s Center for Food safety and Applied Nutrition, however, said the formula should pose no threat to infants. Therefore, he recommended parents continue on feeding babies with the same products.

Melamine, a toxic chemical used for producing plastics and fertilizers, was previously detected in Chinese milk. Four babies died and more than 50,000 took ill after drinking formula milk tainted with the chemical. If ingested, melamine can lead to the formation of kidney stones and crystals and related complications.

The FDA began testing infant formula in September and has so far analyzed 74 of the 87 products it has collected. None of the samples contained both melamine and a related compound, cyanuric acid. After reviewing the samples and animal studies, the agency decided that either melamine or cyanuric acid alone is safe in formula at 1 part per million or less. The results of the other 13 samples are pending.

Nestle SA’s liquid Good Start Supreme Infant Formula with Iron tested positive for melamine in as much as 0.14 parts per million, and cyanuric acid was found in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s powder Enfamil Lipil with Iron, in as much as 0.249 parts per million, Sundlof said.

This month, the FDA announced it was limiting the import of all dairy products from China until they have been proved free of melamine.