Consumers may soon be able to go for longer between milk-buying trips. That's because Brazilian company Agrindus hopes to start marketing plastic milk bottles that use embedded silver nanoparticles to kill bacteria. Grade A pasteurized fresh whole milk packaged in those bottles can reportedly last for up to 15 days, as opposed to the usual seven.
The technology was developed by partner company Nanox, and involves first coating silica ceramic particles with silver nanoparticles. This reportedly has a synergistic effect, with the silica boosting the antimicrobial properties of the silver.
Those coated particles take the form of a powder that is subsequently mixed into liquid polyethylene. Using blow- or injection-molding, that plastic is then made into bottles which Agrindus plans to sell to dairy goods companies. The particles can also be used to make milk bags, which should extend shelf life from four to 10 days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:30AM
I think milk is one of the better products in terms of shelf life already. On the other hand I'd not like to introduce any more nanoparticles to my system... While silver itself seems quite benign, everybody and their dog know that once you go nano, all bets are off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:36AM
If you drink silver in your milk, does it make you taste bad when the strigoi drink you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:36AM
I may have found a way to defend myself against vampires:
Drink milk laced with silver nanoparticles. The nanoparticles become part of my body and when a vampire touches me (for drinking my blood), he burns to death in a quick fireball. The rest of his kind run away.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sudo rm -rf on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:54AM
Good plan, basically, but keep in mind that it would not affect vampires but werewolves instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @12:45PM
Depends on what mythology the vampire hails from.
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Archon V2.0 on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:32PM
Oh, great! I've got a house on an island in the middle of a river. I have garlic, hawthorn, pineapples, AND screwpine growing all over the place. I have so many holy symbols painted on the building it looks like graffiti and after I added the Buddhist ones people thought I was a Nazi. And don't get me started on the police complaints after I started leaving emergency stakes and machetes around the property, especially since I have to keep polishing the machetes to a mirror finish.
Now you're saying I ALSO have to drink silver if I want to keep vampires away. I'll start to look like a smurf, do you realize how DUMB that will look?
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:36PM
It will be even dumber if the Vampire who finally gets you is the sparkly kind.
Worst afterlife ever...
(Score: 2, Funny) by Wierd0n3 on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:45PM
so dress in some spandex, and tell them you are the tick, they will completely understand, and pay for your next hotel visit where you can socialize with many people who are just like you.
(Score: 3, Informative) by xav on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:41AM
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:31PM
Please note that Argyria is mostly harmless. It's mostly just cosmetic, but it is currently irreversible.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:28PM
So, if you're incorporating silver into your tissues to this extent, does it render you more impervious to projectiles or radiation?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday August 06 2015, @11:14PM
I'm assuming, that you'd be dead long before you got enough silver in your body to markedly increase either. The only reason Wolverine didn't die is, because he was already a "Super Hero" with crazy regeneration. I assume at some point ingestion of silver or gold would result in "Heavy Metal Poisoning". The difference is that it would either take a lot more or you are much less likely to get enough of either than you are with something like lead.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @01:16PM
[...] I'd not like to introduce any more nanoparticles to my system...
Too bad the industry will ensure labelling laws don't require them to notify you of the contents, so like GM foods, you'll never know what your ingesting. Until it's too late, and we discover all kinds of detrimental health issues that can be traced back to "silver poisoning." But hey, just so long as nothing gets in the way of commerce, all praise our corporate overlords and their duly elected government lackeys.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:00PM
It isn't benign. There's a bunch of wingnuts out in the West that have drunk themselves a permanently blue skin with silver particles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:22PM
Wait a second, is this actually the slashdot of the infowars crowd?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by richtopia on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:46AM
I thought milk spoilage was solved. I have some powdered milk in my closet that is months old, and there are the airtight cartons of milk that have an extended shelf life also.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:34PM
I also have dehydrated water at home for long term storage.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by albert on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:47AM
I don't want to get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria [wikipedia.org] from my milk.
At my house, 4 gallons disappear in about 2 days. It doesn't get a chance to rot. People drink it.
In theory, sour milk has uses. Add baking soda, sugar, flour, water, cinnamon, ginger... you get gingerbread cookies. Of course milk can't go bad (see above) normally, so the point is moot.
Well maybe a lengthy power outage right after a shopping trip would do the job. I guess maybe you could have a jug roll under the car seat and get forgotten, or maybe your refrigerator could die... but how often does that happen? Pretty much, milk can't actually go bad.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:31AM
Technically, silver is a heavy metal. It's supposedly harmless but the fact that it kills bacteria does make one wonder...
To be fair to heavy metals, though, many are regulated due to effects on sensitive wildlife (e.g. zinc kills fish eggs, etc) and not for known harmful effects to humans.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:19AM
um... I think in general it's a good idea to keep heavy metals away. At least, there were at least a couple of episodes of House MD where the patient was gonna die due to heavy metal poisoning (including the memorable one about the dude dying of gold poisoning).
also, see wiki link to argyria that people posted above.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @03:49AM
A fictional TV show should never be used to support your position on anything (except culture).
(Score: 2) by penguinoid on Thursday August 06 2015, @11:31AM
Almost all metals can accumulate and cause poisoning, and this includes metals like iron and copper that you need to live. Even more generally, anything that doesn't dissolve in water won't be passing through your kidneys.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday August 06 2015, @05:06PM
That's not quite the case. Once the silver is in nanoparticle form, it will be able to travel everywhere in your body including crossing the blood-brain barrier and through your kidneys.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:42PM
The most common version of Heavy Metal Poisoning is probably Lead Poisoning which does have adverse effects on the human body. From Wikipedia "Chronic ingestion or inhalation of silver preparations (especially colloidal silver) can lead to argyria in the skin and other organs. This is not life-threatening, but is considered by most as cosmetically undesirable." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria/ [wikipedia.org] Interesting wikipedia article on "Colloidal Gold." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colloidal_gold/ [wikipedia.org] You really have to ingest a Lot of Silver / Gold to start to experience side effects. I also wouldn't start quoting the TV Series House on the subject . . .
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by Hyperturtle on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:36PM
You're fortunate you are able to consume it so quickly. I may have a gallon go bad before I am done with it. I only add milk to coffee, and sometimes for a bowl of cereal or when a recipe calls for it. I've never been much of a milk drinker simply because I need to consume it daily and I don't always have the taste for it. When I want it, it's gone bad or I don't have any. And yes I can buy a smaller container, but it seems I need something that is 3/4th a gallon as opposed to half or a full gallon... packaging costs more, to get a quart and a half gallon, so I end up wasting some of the full simply because it is more cost effective to be a horrible person in that way.
I used to mix it with protein powder, but found that unless I very quickly, and very thoroughly, cleaned out that glass I mixed the power with the milk in -- THAT goes bad. Yuck. Using water was far cleaner and easier to take care of if I did not have the time to actually scrub out the shaker or something. I guess that's a 1st world inconvenience if I am unable to appropriately clean a reusable container immediately after taking a swig of protein powder after excercising. Sometimes, there isn't time to do the right thing as far as dish maintenance is concerned, when you are at work and heading to a meeting.
(Score: 2) by hankwang on Thursday August 06 2015, @05:54PM
"Pretty much, milk can't actually go bad."
There was a time that I didn't drink much milk and that I took an unopened carton of pasteurized milk out of the fridge that was 'best before' next week. But the date was only day-month, without year. To this day I don't know whether it was 1 or 2 years old. :-)
Out of curiosity, I did open it. It looked mostly like yogurt with some transparent liquid layer on top. Never tasted it though.
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:11PM
That is the thing. If you dont drink milk do not buy extra.
Before I got married I would maybe drink a pint every other week. If that. I bought the smaller container to match my usage. Even then I usually tossed 1/4th of it due to spoilage. Usually along the lines of 'I dont remember buying milk recently'. Then the 'oh thats 2 months old'.
Even with something like this I would still buy the smaller container. It would still go bad.
Now we crack thru 2 gallons every few days. Usually if we get one 'go bad' it was because someone up the chain did something wrong. The store is usually very accommodating and just gives us another gallon.
In this area it would be easy to control the stock at the store. Just announce it is going to snow. Everyone will clean out the shelves.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:02AM
Why not make the bottles out of solid silver? That would also solve the waste problem, as nobody would just throw them away! ;-)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:25AM
After I collect 30 silver bottles, can I crucify my neighbor?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:38AM
We *used* to have real silver silverware. Boy was it ever a pain in the ass. I remember as a kid having a can of "Brasso" open and polishing the stuff every weekend.
I could not imagine a worse use for the metal silver than to make eating utensils out of it.
Well, making coax connectors out of it seemed nearly as bad. I was told that the black silver tarnish was conductive, but it sure looked bad.
Every attempt I did at cleaning the connector only caused the copper wire parts of the connector to corrode, and made the connector useless if DC leakage was critical.
However, I did get a good prank out of some silver nitrate and my friends cousin's bottle of suntan lotion..... I leave it to your imagination what she looked like after a few minutes at the beach.
She was bragging that it would give her the darkest tan on the beach. I made sure it did.
You could say she was well developed.
She got what she was asking for, and still wasn't happy!!!
( Ok, now everybody knows why I was never successful in getting a date... )
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:09AM
You kept whining about how you really wanted to date your own sister instead?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:14AM
Well, I wanted to date her...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:17AM
If you were polishing because of the black oxidation, then it's just a lack of knowledge. The black oxidation is easily removed by putting the silver onto some aluminium (like aluminium foil) in salted water. And then you just wait. As a bonus, unlike with polishing, you don't remove some of the silver that way.
I'm not sure if it would work out with the connectors, though (it certainly wouldn't affect the copper, but probably the salted water would cause other problems).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:21PM
Well, making coax connectors out of it seemed nearly as bad. I was told that the black silver tarnish was conductive, but it sure looked bad.
Electricity does not care how it looks. Silver, like aluminium, and perhaps other metals, tarnishes a thin airtight layer, and then tarnishes no further until some idiot abrades it off with metal polish. Thus protecting the copper inside, which will eventually decompose into a green oxide if exposed to oxygen.
Every attempt I did at cleaning the connector only caused the copper wire parts of the connector to corrode, and made the connector useless if DC leakage was critical.
See above reference to idiots with metal polish.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @02:58AM
Thanks... what you described is exactly what went down.
I am older and wiser now, but in my youth I did many an asinine thing. Fortunately lived to tell about it.
I guess the most terrible thing is with as much experience as I have acquired, I *still* do quite asinine things from time to time.
Usually not nearly as dangerous, but every bit as destructive and wasteful of resources.
Not intentionally, but as a result of a failed attempt to do something.
Signed:
The idiot with the can of metal polish.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mendax on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:29AM
I learned about 13 years ago after I burned the hell out of my leg on a hot motorcycle pipe that silver is used as a topical antibiotic, used especially with serious burns. As I recall it was silver sulfate, or something that sounded like that. However, it didn't exactly work all that well, nor did the potent antibiotic I was taking for it. Eventually, after a round of IV antibiotics after I got home, the infection cleared up.
But I think I know a better way to increase the shelf life of milk. When I was in grad school and doing some programming for a nuclear physicist, he was doing experiments with using gamma rays to preserve food. It's simple. Package the food, then irradiate it with the gamma rays to kill the bugs that are in the package. It's a good idea, safe (once you're out of the bottling plant), and shouldn't change the flavor of the milk any more than pasteurization does. Of course, once the bottle is opened, all bets are off.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:20AM
Well, in Germany we have milk that remains good for 14 days without applying either silver or radiation.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday August 06 2015, @01:37PM
Milk is milk, it's probably not really good for 14 days every time. You can't put a date on there and assume that it's going to be automatically good for that long. If you take care of it, as in keep it refrigerated, then it will usually last a couple weeks. Generally, it's about a week beyond the sell buy date, or whatever date the store uses. Regardless of when the milk says it's good till, there's a ton of sugar and if you're not storing it properly or it becomes contaminated, then all bets are off as to how long it will last.
The silver is probably more to do with situations where the milk has been allowed to warm a bit or you really need it to stay good for longer.
Personally, I don't think the risk of nano-particles that can puncture bacteria being ingested is worth it. I buy enough milk that it never lasts more than 2 weeks anyways, so I'm not sure why this would be worth the risk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:51AM
Some glass types (especially the optical types) already contain weak sources of radioactivity. So just go back to glass bottles. Presto, no ZOMG RADIATION WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE needed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday August 06 2015, @11:26AM
Hmm, Nuka Milk?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:08PM
Wouldn't work, you need fizz, perhaps as some sort of soft drink...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:17PM
Silvadene Cream.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a682598.html [nih.gov]
http://www.drugs.com/pro/silvadene.html [drugs.com]
I've had my rounds with it. The stuff is great. I swear, when you really need it, the feeling resulting from slathering it on your arm (or wherever) is better than any sex you might dream about. The pain just stopped. Gone.
Of course, the pain relief doesn't last. The sweet relief lasts - ohhh - ten to twenty minutes. By then, the doc should have given you something powerful to keep the pain at bay.
As an antibiotic, I guess it's alright. I didn't get infected when I used it. The side benefit that many might miss, is the moisturizing effect. You don't dry out while there is a layer of silvadene on the burned area.
Your experience and my own sound so different, I wonder if you got some knockoff branded stuff that skimped on the active ingredients - primarily silver.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:20PM
And, oh yeah - there IS an expiration date on the stuff. I almost forgot about that. I had a huge tub of the stuff left over, which sat in the refrigerator for several years. When my sons were burnt, I pulled that out - and it was near useless by that time. It wouldn't spread properly, and the boys got little if any pain relief from it. So - maybe you got some old, outdated silvadene?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 5, Informative) by throwaway28 on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:30AM
Same idea as the irradiation post above, if it's ultra high temperature pasteurized and sealed properly, silver isn't necessary.
http://itotd.com/articles/220/milk-in-a-box/ [itotd.com]
(Score: 2) by penguinoid on Thursday August 06 2015, @11:42AM
If you want your milk to last a long time, ultra-pasteurized milk will last for years unrefrigerated. Until you open it. But the silver nanoparticles should work on opened milk too.
My main concern is that you can get silver poisoning -- although I imagine this will be tested for exactly that.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:49PM
Silver in the doses you would get would be negligible. The only issue I could see is, if you are allergic to silver.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stormreaver on Thursday August 06 2015, @12:33PM
So now our milk contains:
1) BPA (a carcinogen).
2) Formaldehyde (a carcinogen).
3) Silver (probably a carcinogen in the way it's used, despite what our corrupt government claims).
No thanks. How about we have our milk be just milk? I recommend buying your milk directly from a local farmer.
(Score: 1) by miljo on Thursday August 06 2015, @01:02PM
This.
As a kid I remember going to a local dairy and buying 1/2 gallon bottles full of "raw" milk. We made all sorts of things like butter, cheese and whipped cream, or we'd shake the jar and drink the mixed whole milk. At first I thought it tasted grassy, but as I've gotten older, I've realized that's what milk is supposed to taste like.
Now I try to get raw milk whenever I can, and when I can't, I buy it from a local dairy in paper cartons or glass bottles only.
One should strive to achieve, not sit in bitter regret.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:40PM
Oh YEAH! I remember that as well. I think I was about 8 years old, when the Pennsylvania version of the FDA put a stop to it. It suddenly became a violation of state law for a farmer to sell raw milk to anyone other than a processing plant.
The flavor? Raw milk was all I knew. Rich, wholesome, and actually somewhat filling. The pasteurized stuff? Mehhh - they took all the goodness away. The cream was gone. The flavor was gone. It was like drinking a glass of water.
THEN they came out with skim milk, and 2% and 1%. Crazy shit. If you want a glass of water, there's the tap. If you want milk, there's the cow. Jeez, Louise, all the government ever did with milk, was to piss me off. Well - government and middle men in the industry. Steal my cream from my milk, then try to sell it to me again in some other form, like cheese. Bunch of arsewipes.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:22PM
I used to get nonraw milk here in Quebec, in glass bottles. It was pasteurized but not homogenized. It's the homogenisation that prevents the cream from separating. SO the cream was on top, and it tasted good.
When the industry switched to cartons instead of bottles, apparently to eliminate the trouble of collecting and cleaning the bottles for reuse, we ended up with the uniform stuff you describe.
Except we still don't have bovine growth hormones in our milk. Such things are banned in Quebec. Milk here is relatively pure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @04:06AM
THEN they came out with skim milk, and 2% and 1%. Crazy shit. If you want a glass of water, there's the tap. If you want milk, there's the cow. Jeez, Louise, all the government ever did with milk, was to piss me off.
How revealing that you think the government, rather than free market forces, forced dairies to sell skim milk. Must have been the UN enforcing a world-wide production quota with their black helicopters and skim-ops special forces teams.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:02PM
It doesn't taste grassy, it *is* grass - minute quantities of the chlorophyll probably...but milk is the result of microbial metabolism so 100% conversions is not guaranteed. A possibly more important point is that unpasteurised milk has many protein complexes that a destroyed on heating. There is active research trying to assess the difference, from the point of view of maternal milk vs other mammalian milks that have been treated.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:28PM
Well, OK, but I think you should be aware that there are significant health risks [fda.gov] to drinking raw milk.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday August 07 2015, @02:04PM
If you look for health risks, you find health risks.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Dr.+Davaasambuu+milk+cancer [google.com]
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Saturday August 08 2015, @03:21AM
Never forget that all major U.S. Government agencies are owned by big business. The FDA is ruled, in part, by corporate milk producers. You can't believe a damned thing that comes from there, and must, through necessity, do your own research.
Corporate milk contains multiple poisons (see my original posting) that are injected (for lack of a better term) for no other purpose than to increase corporate profits. Your health does not even register in the decision making process except as a lie to separate you from your money. The bizarre notion that raw milk is inherently dangerous is laughable.
I switched from corporate milk to local raw goat milk, which is nutritionally better than cow milk and tastes great, several years ago (among other nutritional changes) and haven't had any adverse effects.
Grocery store milk, on the other hand, induced various form of mild illness on a regular bases over the years.