Sure enough, I was looking at RDX and talking about NG. Anyway, Spiff, if you get a chance to toss any references my way, I'd be most interested--everything I have here dates from 1998 and is more or less exclusively looking for the NO2 moiety rather than the organic base.

I'll see what I can dig up.

Still digging I guess? ;)

Just curious! :)

-Mark

I've been digging on and off, and my best guess is that the hand-lotion, etc., false positives spottily reported in the press and attributed to things that sound like the "glyceri-" in nitroglycerine are, in fact, false positives rather than any attempt to target the organic base. I haven't learned nearly enough about ion mobility spectrometry (which I'm guessing to be the detection method in these cases) to speculate what actual compounds might be the culprits, or even whether they would be aminated, for that matter. If anyone wants to share, I'm all ears.

No, I haven't. It's been a busy couple of days.

a Link
 

I could shed a lot of light on this but suffice it to say that I cant. Here is a link for you though: http://194.105.117.18/products/Defau...Transportation

CNN is reporting the document residue-scanners are being used at ORD, LAX, JFK, and DCA as of 9/22. The article implies that only SSSSelectees, alarm-ees, and those who are "selected by security workers" will be scanned.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/09/23....ap/index.html

If TSA does this right, it could be an actual security improvement. If 85-year-olds taking nitro are delayed for "questioning" so long that they miss their flight or denied boarding, it will be another fiasco.

Yes, yes, I'm aware of all this. It speaks not a whit to the false positives I'm talking about. (Put another way, when I said I didn't know enough about IMS, I didn't say that I had never performed mass spectrometry.)

I also agree that false positives can be a real problem - much like false negatives! ;)

Either can render a system as nearly useless.

It's all about getting it done properly, I agree! :)

-Mark

I guess I should not shoot bottle rockets or blow off fireworks while holding my boarding pass. ;)

---

Depends on where you want to spend the night, no? :D

-Mark