Sometimes fragrances can have some very bizarre applications. A friend of mine, Pete – not his real name because I don’t want him approached - who is a renowned organic chemist was approached by HM Customs & Excise. They wanted to know if it was possible to add a fragrance to money in such a way that dogs would be able to tell if a passenger was carrying more than the allowed limit through customs. An interesting problem on several fronts – health and safety, environmental, technical, practical etc.
Pete had to decide which chemical to use. The chemical has to be detected by ions. Most negative ions are explosives and most positive ions are drugs so the challenge was to find a positive ion that wasn’t a narcotic. Dogs are already trained to detect narcotics and you couldn’t risk an overlap.
Customs and Excise gave Pete the figures on the number of notes in circulation and the average life of a note. He already knew the approximate level of odour necessary for a dog to reliably detect it and this gave a tonnage of the chosen chemical per annum. He considered that one metric tonne would be sufficient and from an environmental point of view he would have to be sure that this level of odour released into the atmosphere every year was acceptable.
Money is something that comes into skin contact with everyone so whatever the chemical used, it would have to be safe. An interesting (but irrelevant) statistic that emerged was that 95% of all US paper money contains traces of cocaine! From a technical point of view, the odour release would of course need to be very cosistent over the life of the note so that a set level of odour always represented a set level of money.
Once the chemical had been chosen (which is confidential at this stage) the next step was to look at the delivery system. He planned to use chemical tube-like structures embedded in the cotton (yes, money is not made from paper, it’s made from cotton fibre and linen rag), then the fragrance could be embedded inside these tubes. If the tubes ran in parallel lines across the note, and the odour could only escape from the end, then the note would only smell on the edge. This would mean that the amount of odour emanating from a wad of cash would be in proportion the amount of money. If the odour came off the face of the note, a wad of notes would smell as strong as a single note.
The project is underway at the moment and if successful will result in dogs effectively being able to count money! Oh, and the amount you’re allowed to carry? I think it’s €10,000.
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