Debunking the “cocaine on 100% of Irish banknotes” story
Thursday, January 11th, 2007
BBC: Cocaine on ‘100% of Irish euros’:
One hundred percent of banknotes in the Republic of Ireland carry traces of
cocaine, a new study has found.Researchers used the latest forensic techniques that would detect even the
tiniest fragments to study a batch of 45 used banknotes.The scientists at Dublin’s City University said they were “surprised by their
findings”.
Also at RTE, Irish
Examiner, PhysOrg.com, Bloomberg.com,
even at Kazakhstan’s
KazInform.
This story is (of course) being played widely in the media as “OMG Ireland must
use more coke than anywhere else” — in particular, in comparison
with a previous study in the US:
The most recent survey carried out in the US showed 65% of dollar notes were
contaminated with cocaine.
The DCU press-release
has a few more details:
Using a technique involving chromatography/mass spectrometry, a sample of 45
bank notes were analysed to show the level of contamination by cocaine. …62% of notes were contaminated with levels of cocaine at concentrations
greater than 2 nanograms/note, with 5% of the notes showing levels greater
than 100 times higher, indicating suspected direct use of the note in either
drug dealing or drug inhalation. … The remainder of the notes which showed
only ultra-trace quantities of cocaine was most probably the result of
contact with other contaminated notes, which could have occurred within bank
counting machines or from other contaminated surfaces.
However, looking at an abstract of what I think is the paper in question,
Evaluation of monolithic and sub 2 µm particle packed columns for the rapid
screening for illicit drugs — application to the determination of drug
contamination on Irish euro
banknotes,
Jonathan Bones, Mirek Macka and Brett Paull, Analyst, 2007, DOI:
10.1039/b615669j, that says:
A study comparing recently available 100 × 3 mm id, 200 × 3 mm id monolithic
reversed-phase columns with a 50 × 2.1 mm id, 1.8 µm particle packed
reversed-phase columns was carried out to determine the most efficient
approach … for the rapid screening of samples for 16 illicit drugs and
associated metabolites. … Method performance data showed that the new
LC-MS/MS method was significantly more sensitive than previous GC-MS/MS
based methods for this application.
My emphasis. I’d guess that that means that comparing this result to
banknote-analysis experiments carried out elsewhere using different methods is
probably invalid — perhaps this method is more efficient at picking up
‘contact with other contaminated notes, which could have occurred within bank
counting machines or from other contaminated surfaces’, as noted in the DCU
release?
Tags:bad journalism banknotes chemistry cocaine dcu drugs ireland press research science
This post was written by Justin, source: Debunking the “cocaine on 100% of Irish banknotes” story
