From cocaine in banknotes to airport bomb detection: chromatography
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What could detecting cocaine on bank notes possibly have in common with airport screening?
As some of us just noticed over the holiday season, some air travelers have been subjected to a swab at the airport to test clothes and baggage for explosives. But have you ever wondered how airport security actually works? The answer is chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. Contemporary detectors harness analytical chemistry for monitoring and screening.
Although instrumental chromatography is a mature technology (the first instruments were produced just after WWII), new applications frequently pop up. Some are a matter of scale. Pharmaceutical companies that produce monoclonal antibodies (often used in cancer treatments) make use of capture chromatography to purify their products.
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On an industrial scale, these can be tens of centimeters in diameter and meters in length (typical lab scale systems are a few millimeters diameter and 5 to 30cm long).
Other uses can either be in a specific new application, such as detecting cocaine on bank notes using the gas chromatography systems often seen at airports as bomb and drug detectors. This, according to a report on HomeLand Security News Wire.
The presence of cocaine on US paper currency has been known for a long time. Banknotes become contaminated during the exchange, storage, and abuse of cocaine. The analysis of cocaine on various denominations of US banknotes in the general circulation can provide law enforcement circles and forensic epidemiologists objective and timely information on epidemiology of illicit drug use and on how to differentiate money contaminated in the general circulation from banknotes used in drug transaction.
