Vaporid Dedectoc appears fentanyl traces and other components in the air
Elizabeth Denis / Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
US Customs and Border Ah Agency Trial Technology is the technology that focuses on illegal substances in the air, no contact should be. The device can screen the boundary items in seconds to help sell drugs such as fentanyl, driving the Chanioid crisis in the US.
Medicines and explosive chemicals are hard to see because they release some molecules of ambient air, which has already been filled with other vapors. To solve this problem, Robert Ewing And his colleagues in the US Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Washington State spent the previous decade developing a sensitive system called steam. It can accurately identify specific components from 0.6 to 2.4 meters level 10 parts per coin of a coin of 17 million hours longer than the Mount Everest.
Government scientists have achieved it by giving molecules from substances of interest more time in random blasts of other molecules and make a found chemical reaction. Most devices for identifying unknown substances provide molecules to some millisects of reaction, as ewing. “We have made the atmospheric tube, which gives 2 or 3 second reaction time and provided three orders of magnitude to increase in sensitivity.”
That technology is currently attached to an 18-kilogram commercial device the size of a microwave oven. The miniaturized machine, developed in Bayspec-based California, is less sensitive than the PNNL laba version, weight in 1 kilograms and the size of a small fridge. But it is still “more accurate and more sensitive than a canine”, as William YangCEO at Bayspec.
Bayspec researchers and PNNL tested the portable device at a Customs and Border facility (CBP) with sampons drugs – in October, Fentanyl and Methamphetamine – and held open bowls near the closet closet. Separate trials, researchers turn off the face of seized pills and heat the swabs to satisfy the vapor. “Both methods make strong, trustworthy results,” as Christian Horna at Bayspec.
Prototype is still under investigation and requires additional scientific data check, says a CBP spokesman.
Alex Krotulski In the center for science science research, a non-profit organization of Pennsylvania, which remains “better disposes of research periods in current years overdealized and underdelivised”.
Have portable methods, such as x-ray, for unloading hidden medicines, as Richard Crocombean independent massachusetts consultant. He called the new tool “another valuable approach to Arsenal”, but neglected “No technique meets all the needs”. For example, the CBP spokesman says that even though it can make the drug test recovery in the fields, the new device will still require analyzing a trained chemist.
Such screensing techniques are also risking that false positive because “sometimes it feels like drug residue is more”, as Joseph Palamar In New York University. passing survey It shows that it is polluted most of the US paper, for example. “If it works as ‘positive’ for a person near the people using Fentanyl and so I’m concerned about people who are irrelevant or punished,” as Chelsea Shover At the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dropping drugs before they enter the country only one side of a wider strategy required for curbing the Opioid crisissays shover. However, solve this also ask strong public health agencies, access to health care and widespread treatment options, he says, that are currently cut under the Trump administration. “To save lives, we want treatment – evidence-based, effective treatment – to make access easier than bad medicines,” Shover said.
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