1 in 10 People Have Drugs on Their Fingers Right Now
Illicit drugs are so prevalent in our society, they touch everything - literally. Traces of cocaine are found on a full 90% of paper US currency. That means that 9 out of 10 bills in your pocket have trace amounts of Colombian bam bam all over it. It's only natural to assume that by handling that money, you are destined to come into contact with some of the illicit substances. If you are following the logic, you're probably looking at your hands right now - and you should be. According to PHYS.ORG, around 13% of us have traces of either cocaine or heroin on their hands right now!
A test conducted by the University of Surrey found that more than 1 in 10 people have either traces of cocaine or a metabolite of heroin on their hands at any given time! It's not just from handling money either, according to Dr Melanie Bailey with Forensic Analysis at the University of Surrey - the drugs are a very common environmental contaminate. The trace amounts found in their fingerprint study could be from handshakes, door knobs, or a million other places.
The data collected by this study, co-funded by Intelligent Fingerprinting, will be used to further develop a fingerprint drug scanner that can test for drug use in sweat taken from a fingerprint sample.