“90 percent of U.S. bills carry traces of cocaine”
“In the course of its average 20 months in circulation, U.S. currency gets whisked into ATMs, clutched, touched and traded perhaps thousands of times at coffee shops, convenience stores and newsstands. And every touch to every bill brings specks of dirt, food, germs or even drug residue.
Research presented this weekend reinforced previous findings that 90 percent of paper money circulating in U.S. cities contains traces of cocaine.
Scientists say the amount of cocaine found on bills is not enough to cause health risks.
Money can be contaminated with cocaine during drug deals or if a user snorts with a bill. But not all bills are involved in drug use; they can get contaminated inside currency-counting machines at the bank.
Zuo, who spoke about his research at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society on Sunday, found that $5, $10, $20 and $50 bills were more likely to be positive for cocaine than $1 bills.
Adam Negrusz, an associate professor of forensic sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said he isn’t worried about the cleanliness of money in terms of public health.
“I never think about this as a source of danger. We have more things which can be potentially harmful,” said Negrusz, who was not involved in Zuo’s study.
Although the contaminated bills do not affect health, Negrusz said, they could cause in a false positive drug test if a person, such as a law enforcement officer or banker, handles contaminated currency repeatedly.
“Imagine a bank teller who’s working with cash-counting machine in the basement of the bank,” Negrusz said. “Many of those bills, over 90 percent, are contaminated with cocaine. There is cocaine dust around the machines. These bank tellers breathe in cocaine. Cocaine gets into system, and you can test positive for cocaine. … That’s what’s behind this whole thing that triggered testing money for drugs.”
Zuo hopes to compile the data from his research to form a drug use map, saying it could provide insights about regional cocaine use.
Compared with currency from Brazil, Canada, China and Japan, U.S. bills had the highest percentage of cocaine, with 90 percent of 234 bank notes contaminated. Canada followed with 85 percent and Brazil with 80 percent. China and Japan had the lowest, with 20 and 12 percent respectively.
“Actually, we were surprised to find cocaine in Chinese bank note,” Zuo said after analyzing 112 samples from China.
After the Communist Party took over, the country was relatively free of drugs from 1949 until the 1980s because of harsh punishments against substance use, he said. Two years ago, Zuo collaborated with Beijing scientists on testing bank notes and didn’t find any contamination with cocaine.
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There you have it ladies and gentlemen! Keep your rolled-up dollars to yourself.
And on a side note: Beware all you Chinese Bank tellers! Do not test for any drug use in the near future.
