Milk tokens

Lisa Ann Bengston <lbengston [at] royalbcmuseum__bc__ca> writes

>We have a collection of plastic dairy tokens recently donated to the
>Royal B.C. Museum and Archives.  ...
>...
>.. it was discovered that about one third of the
>collection was covered in a white bloom. There was also a
>distinctive sour milk odour present when the bags of the affected
>tokens were opened.  I did a Beilstein test on a sample token and
>found it negative for cellulose nitrate. ...

Is it possible the tokens themselves were made of casein
(polymerised milk protein)?

D. Rohan


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 22:35
                 Distributed: Monday, December 8, 2008
                       Message Id: cdl-22-35-008
                                  ***