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This Chip Can Tell If You've Been Poisoned
sciencehabit writes "When you are dealing with a deadly poison that can be found in food and is a potential terrorist weapon, you want the best detection tools you can get. Now, researchers in France have demonstrated an improved method to detect the most deadly variant of the botulinum neurotoxin, which causes botulism. Their test — essentially, a lab on a tiny chip (abstract) — provides results faster than the standard method and accurately detects even low concentrations of the toxin."
Every Great House should have a poison snooper
Weirdly, some hippie, sex-loving, heterodox Hindu preacher's followers tried it in 1984, infecting 751 people in Oregon with salmonella. But it didn't kill anyone.
Their hope had been that everyone would stay home sick from the local elections, so they'd be able to vote in their preferred candidate.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"If it doesn't cost too much it'd be a godsend to those of us who are (probably needlessly) overly cautious (or perhaps just paranoid) about this sort of stuff."
It's completely harmless, people like it so much, actors, politicians and housewives (real or not) even inject it into their foreheads.
Perhaps it can detect that too?
In California, even a spit ball can be a potential terrorist weapon...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
From the article on botulism it appears that commercially canned goods are safe (and even terrorist would have a problem to get the toxin into the can after sealing and cooking which destroys spores and toxin). And on home-made goods it might be a bit difficult to enforce attachment of a chip on every glass of canned fruits.
The analyzed attack vectors seem to be (according to the German wikipedia entry on the toxin, the english one is too occupied with medical use) milk, water and air. All of them do not lend well to chip attachment.
Actually the chip talked about is for analyzing a patient's blood sample (see TFA) to detect he has been poisoned, not for detecting it in food.
That was about a search for some missing kids. The botulism was just a MacGuffin to get the ball rolling. The kids went camping and mom had packed some ham sandwiches. There was a radio announcement that the manufacturer was recalling canned ham, and when the mom checked the can's serial number... sure enough.
There are about 250 food recalls a year with about a third of them related to microbiological issues like botulism.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!