"Smart" stickers will point to spoiled products

All of us are accustomed to trust (or not trust) markings on foodstuffs with an indication of the expiration date. But unscrupulous sellers find ways to bypass this system in order not to lose profit and sell the buyer overdue goods. Perhaps the invention of American chemists from the University of Clarkson will help to avoid this problem in the future. They developed a new kind of simple tests that can recognize corrupt or contaminated food and cosmetics.

On the results of their work, scientists told at the 254th National Congress and Exhibition of the American Chemical Society in Washington, and the journal Science published details of the development. The main goal of scientists was to create a simple way to test products to recognize the signs that they are no longer suitable for food. Experts relied on already known laboratory methods. As the author of the study, Silvana Andreescu,

"Most scientists working on similar sensors use solutions that move through channels. We use stable inorganic particles that show redox activity. When they interact with substances that we want to notice, they change color, and the concentration of the substance depends on how much this change is significant. "

Ready "smart" stickers are scraps of paper, the size of a postage stamp. These small test systems are marked with specific indicator substances indicating the presence of a substance in the analyzed object. When contacting the connections indicating that the product is no longer usable, the indicators change color. Already, new test systems can detect orhatoxin A - an extremely toxic substance produced by mold fungi during the mold infection of a variety of foods.

But that's not all. As the scientists assure, their development can also be used to determine the place of production of tea or wine by the unique composition of antioxidants. And in the future, experts plan to expand the functionality of their tests: they want to add the possibility of identifying salmonella, Escherichia coli and a number of other infectious diseases that are dangerous to health.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/eto-interesno/umnye-naklejki-ukazhut-na-isporchennye-produkty.html.