(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON, March 14, 2012 — The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions" podcast series describes the development of a new test that could help track down and prosecute terrorists.
Amid concerns about the threat of terrorist attacks, scientists have been seeking better protection for the U.S. and other nations. One such team has developed a technique that could help authorities catch terrorists and put them out of business. A report on the development appeared in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry, and became the topic of the new podcast.
Nerve agents like sarin, or GB, are some of the most dangerous terrorist threats. Although traces of these substances would remain after an attack, there has been no practical way of tracing the remains backward in time — to the company from which they were purchased or possibly to the terrorists who bought them.
In the podcast, Carlos Fraga, Ph.D., of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Wash., explains that his team has developed a first-of-its-kind technology that could help law enforcement officials trace the residues from terrorist attacks involving nerve gas and other chemical agents back to the companies or other sources from which the perpetrators obtained ingredients for the agent.
The researchers used a method called "impurity profiling" that identifies impurities in a GB sample at a crime scene and matches them like a fingerprint to the impurities in the source chemicals, pinpointing the likely source. They found that up to 88 percent of the impurities in source chemicals used to make GB can wind up in the finished product, and these impurities are unique, like a fingerprint.
So exactly how would these "fingerprints" help the FBI, police and other federal law enforcement officials? Using standard laboratory instruments, the scientists did impurity profiling and correctly identified the starting materials used for two different batches of GB. This may one day become a basis for using impurity profiling to help find and prosecute perpetrators of chemical attacks, says Fraga.
The new podcast is available without charge at iTunes and from www.acs.org/globalchallenges.
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Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions is a series of podcasts describing some of the 21st century's most daunting problems, and how cutting-edge research in chemistry matters in the quest for solutions. Global Challenges is the centerpiece in an alliance on sustainability between ACS and the Royal Society of Chemistry. Global Challenges is a sweeping panorama of global challenges that includes dilemmas such as providing a hungry, thirsty world with ample supplies of safe food and clean water; developing alternatives to petroleum to fuel society; preserving the environment and assuring a sustainable future for our children and improving human health.
For more entertaining, informative science videos and podcasts from the ACS Office of Public Affairs, view Prized Science, Spellbound, Science Elements and Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 164,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society contact newsroom@acs.org.
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