China ‘can transform the war on drugs’ with ultra-fast portable detector
- Samples are collected by a needle that can detect quantities invisible to the naked eye
- They are then vaporised by a powerful flashlight for almost instant analysis
China has deployed a portable drug detector at some border checkpoints that can radically improve the speed and accuracy of narcotics testing.
Visitors to the country, where drug trafficking can result in the death penalty, can have their luggage or personal belongings poked with a needle by security staff.
The sample collected at the needle’s tip, which is almost invisible to the naked eye, is analysed by a portable device about the size of a home printer. The device can detect the presence of narcotics in quantities as small as 50 picograms – or about the weight of two human red blood cells. A picogram is one trillionth of a gram.
The technology is helping law enforcers identify in three seconds nearly 40 types of drugs in circulation, as well as previously unknown composites made of several types of ingredients.
In most countries, such work is normally carried out in a well-equipped laboratory, taking hours or even days, but the new equipment could enable law enforcers to perform trace analysis anywhere.