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past feature
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Ticket to Jail
The recent
spate of terrorist attacks on aircraft has
prompted scientists to develop new
approaches to detect explosive materials
carried on board by passengers. Oak Ridge
National Laboratory scientists are
developing a mass spectrometry based
instrument to sample an airline
passenger's ticket for explosives.
A simple boarding pass could safeguard air
travelers if an explosives detection
system being developed by Oak Ridge
National Laboratory and Mass Spec
Analytical is adopted. With the mass
spectrometry-based instrument, a
passenger's ticket would become a passive
sampling device that detects even a
billionth of a gram of explosives. The
instrument works by sampling air that
passes over a ticket as the paper is fed
through a scanner and then identifying the
chemical composition of the substances in
the air. The procedure takes just a few
seconds.
"If a person has been in contact with
explosives, this instrument would detect
it," said Dr. Gary Van Berkel, a
researcher in ORNL's Chemical Sciences
Division. "Even if the person were wearing
protective clothing while handling the
explosives, it would still almost
certainly detect it."
The advantage of the system is that all
passengers thereby avoiding random checks
with swabs and other less sophisticated
techniques that cause boarding and flight
delays.
Van Berkel and collaborators claim to have
already performed many tests of the
instrument, which is capable of analyzing
1,000 tickets or boarding passes per hour.
One of the next steps is to incorporate a
simple visual display that identifies the
explosive and triggers an audible alarm.
Developers also plan to add an automated
calibration and threshold setting that
would further prevent false alarms. No
special training would be required for
operators of the final product, Van Berkel
said.
The research is being undertaken with Mass
Spec Analytical of Bristol, England. In
the short term, plans call for further
testing of the instrument and gaining
acceptance for field testing in the United
States, Canada and England.
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