Up to 90 percent of US paper money has traces of cocaine

August 17, 10:21 AMScience News ExaminerMeg Marquardt

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Credit: The American Chemical Society (source)

If you live in a big city and are carrying piece of paper money, you are probably transporting illegal drugs. A team from University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth has found that bills from the US and Canada are highly likely to have trace amounts of cocaine, showing for the first time a growing prevalence in the abuse of the drug.

A worldwide study of bills from over 30 cities in five countries found a startling statistic: “cocaine is present in up to 90 percent of paper money in the United States, particularly in large cities such as Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit. The scientists found traces of cocaine in 95 percent of the banknotes analyzed from Washington, D.C., alone.” [EurekAlert] What is intriguing is that a study conducted two years ago showed 67 percent of bills had traces of cocaine. That means there was over a 20 percent jump.

What has happened over the past two years that caused the growth in cocaine-tainted bills? "I'm not sure why we've seen this apparent increase, but it could be related to the economic downturn, with stressed people turning to cocaine," Dr. Yuegang Zuo, lead author of the study, said. [EurekAlert] Zuo hopes his study can help law enforcement agencies better understand the flow and growth of drug use in communities.

234 US bills from 17 cities were investigated. The results showed that “amounts [found on the bills] ranged from .006 micrograms (several thousands of times smaller than a single grain of sand) to over 1,240 micrograms of cocaine per banknote (about 50 grains of sand).” [EurekAlert] How the drug gets on the bills is well-understood. Money changes hand during a drug deal (of course), but bills are also used in the consumption of cocaine as the drug can be rolled into a bill and snorted. The city with the greatest chance of finding traces of the drug was DC. Salt Lake City bills were the least likely to be contaminated.

Stating that 90 percent of all bills in the US—even those that stay out of circulation in large cities—are carriers of cocaine is most likely an overstatement. But using the technique to do a comparison study between cities is a unique way to understand the rise and fall of drug use. Zuo utilized a modified form of a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer which allowed him to study bills more accurately as well as leave the bills themselves intact.

And what of the other countries studied? Canadian bills came back at 85% contamination while Brazil’s banknotes registered at 80%. China and Japan had the lowest levels, with China at 20 percent and Japan at 12 percent (though only 16 bills were studied from Japan).

Despite the high incidence level in the US, researchers do not think there is a health concern among the general public when handling the bills."For the most part, you can't get high by sniffing a regular banknote, unless it was used directly in drug uptake or during a drug exchange," Zuo said. "It also won't affect your health and is unlikely interfere with blood and urine tests used for drug detection." [EurekAlert]

This research was presented at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.