Tuatara
February 19th, 2004, 05:11 PM
Article from the New Scientist website
Explosive evidence that will not wash away
11:52 19 February 04
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Bombers and bomb makers could soon be exposed by testing their hair for traces of explosives.
Jimmie Oxley, a chemist at the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, has extracted nanograms of the common explosives TNT, RDX and PETN from the hair of workers who handle these chemicals daily when training airport sniffer dogs. Even after several washes and brushing, the explosives still showed up in chromatography tests on a solvent-soaked comb that was run through the hair.
Oxley does not fully understand how the explosives bind to hair, but because her experiments showed that explosives bind more readily to dark hair than light, she thinks the pigment melanin, which gives hair its colour, may play a part. She has not, however, found a single chemical group common to the explosives that could be responsible for the binding.
While drugs such as heroin and cocaine get into hair via blood, Oxley has shown that the explosives simply evaporate and diffuse into the hair of people who handle them. It is the same slow evaporation of TNT, RDX and PETN that lets sniffer dogs detect these explosives.
Traces of explosives have also been found in clothes, but the beauty of using hair is that it is far less likely to be removed. "The Oklahoma city bomber Timothy McVeigh was wearing a T-shirt with TNT on it, but he probably also had explosives in his hair," says Oxley.
She will present the research at the Defense and Security Symposium to be held in Orlando, Florida, in April.
Celeste Biever
Explosive evidence that will not wash away
11:52 19 February 04
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
Bombers and bomb makers could soon be exposed by testing their hair for traces of explosives.
Jimmie Oxley, a chemist at the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, has extracted nanograms of the common explosives TNT, RDX and PETN from the hair of workers who handle these chemicals daily when training airport sniffer dogs. Even after several washes and brushing, the explosives still showed up in chromatography tests on a solvent-soaked comb that was run through the hair.
Oxley does not fully understand how the explosives bind to hair, but because her experiments showed that explosives bind more readily to dark hair than light, she thinks the pigment melanin, which gives hair its colour, may play a part. She has not, however, found a single chemical group common to the explosives that could be responsible for the binding.
While drugs such as heroin and cocaine get into hair via blood, Oxley has shown that the explosives simply evaporate and diffuse into the hair of people who handle them. It is the same slow evaporation of TNT, RDX and PETN that lets sniffer dogs detect these explosives.
Traces of explosives have also been found in clothes, but the beauty of using hair is that it is far less likely to be removed. "The Oklahoma city bomber Timothy McVeigh was wearing a T-shirt with TNT on it, but he probably also had explosives in his hair," says Oxley.
She will present the research at the Defense and Security Symposium to be held in Orlando, Florida, in April.
Celeste Biever