Hair, toenail clippings could detect nuclear smugglers.

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin
• Position: Global Defense

One university has developed a technique that could help detect criminals smuggling nuclear materials by analyzing their toenail clippings and strands of hair.

If a person is suspected of having handled nuclear materials, officials often have to determine that by analyzing the results of a urine test, said John Brockman, an associate professor of research at the University of Missouri's research reactor center.

Urine can detect uranium exposure up to a few days or weeks after contact, he said. "That's great for an occupational exposure type of measurement ... but if you were going to look at somebody who you didn't have a good history on, if they handled uranium six months ago, you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell that by measuring it with the urine analysis," he said.

Under a study funded by a grant from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Brockman and his team developed a procedure to analyze toenail and hair samples to determine if a person had had contact with enriched uranium up to a year before, he said.

During the study, researchers analyzed materials submitted from employees who worked at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The facility is one of six production facilities in the National Nuclear Security Administration's nuclear security enterprise.

The materials were chemically dissolved and then went through what is known as extraction...