Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Law enforcement officials rejoice while drug users cower in fear as researchers from the UK and the Netherlands recently devised a new noninvasive test that can detect cocaine use through a person’s fingerprint.
Their work, detailed in a paper published in the journal Analyst, marks the first time that a simple fingerprint test can detect recent cocaine use. Current fingerprint tests only detect traces of the drug on the hand, the authors explained in a statement. The test u anses analytical chemistry technique called mass spectrometry to analyze a person’s fingerprints.
Lead author Dr Melanie Bailey from the University of Surrey and colleagues from other UK universities worked with the Netherlands Forensic Institute. The groups tested fingerprint tests against saliva tests to determine if the two different kinds of procedures produced similar results when detecting drug use.
The prints don’t lie
Previously, fingerprint tests could tell if a person had touched cocaine, but couldn’t show if the person used the drug in the recent past. As Dr. Bailey explained, a person who takes cocaine tends to excrete traces of benzoylecgonine and methylecgonine as they metabolize the drug, and these chemical indicators can be detected in fingerprint residue.
“For our part of the investigations, we sprayed a beam of solvent onto the fingerprint slide (a technique known as Desorption Electrospray Ionisation, or DESI) to determine if these substances were present,” she said in a statement. “DESI has been used for a number of forensic applications, but no other studies have shown it to demonstrate drug use.”
“The beauty of this method is that, not only is it non-invasive and more hygienic than testing blood or saliva, it can’t be faked,” Dr. Bailey added. “By the very nature of the test, the identity of the subject is captured within the fingerprint ridge detail itself.”
The team believes that the test could be used by probation officers, prisons, and other law enforcement agencies in place of current testing methods that require special facilities and trained professionals. The study authors concluded that the new technique could be usable within the next decade.
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