Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

May 19, 2015

Drug use can now be detected using fingerprints

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 12:00 AM

Saw this interesting article on Slashdot about research being done in University of Surrey in which they claim to be able to detect the use of cocaine by testing fingerprints using ambient mass spectrometry. As per the paper they do this by spaying solvent on the fingerprint slide and then checking for chemical residue in the print which results from drug abuse.

This will have a big impact in a lot of areas if it is viable to do so cheaply. Companies, cops etc can check for Drug usage in non-invasive fashion and if a positive match is found then they can match the finger print to a person as well making it becomes extremely difficult to fool a drug test. Which is a good thing. Though I wonder how long after a use the chemicals are detectable in the print. I would be surprised if there are there forever but even if they are there temporarily it will reduce the drug abuse at work.

However I am sure there are a lot of legal hurdles etc which will need to be solved if the technology is going be widely used. Currently the test only works for Cocaine, it will be interesting if they can do a similar test for other drugs like Heroine etc.

From the paper:

For their research, scientists sprayed a beam of solvent onto the fingerprint slide (a technique known as Desorption Electrospray Ionisation, or DESI) to determine if these metabolites were present. DESI has found use in a number of forensic applications, but has never been used to demonstrate drug use says lead author Dr Melanie Bailey from the University of Surrey.

Researchers took fingerprints and oral fluid from patients attending a drug and alcohol treatment service. Using a technique called gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS), they tested the oral fluid of patients for the presence of cocaine and benzoylecgonine. They then employed DESI, which operates under ambient conditions and Ion Mobility Tandem Mass Spectrometry Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization (MALDI-IMS-MS/MS) and Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS), to analyse the corresponding fingerprints.

– Suramya

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