Opportunities to Improve Airport Passenger Screening with Mass Spectrometry (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-8
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ETDs are located at passenger checkpoints as well as many other airport venues, an(l the acquisition of samples involves an operator wiping (town surfaces of luggage or carry-on items with a dry pad, which is then most commonly introduced into the sample port of an ion mobility spectrometer (IMS)
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Another issue related to sampling is that while passenger screening has been the primary justification for trace cletection, currently deployed systems sample neither the passenger's bocly nor his or her clothing for residues of threat materials but rather only selected personal items and carry-on bags that are likely to have been touched by the passenger. Other than metal detectors, no currently deployed technology screens the passengers themselves.
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, it will be important to develop the capability to concurrently detect a wider range of threat materials. Improving ETD Performance The committee offers the following finding and recommendation for improving the performance of currently deployed ETDs: Finding I: The trace detection systems currently deployed in airports have limited utility for the following reasons: The relatively low chemical specificity of IMS means that the instrument alarm threshoIcI must be set high to avoid excessive false alarms; yet, lower alarm levels are desirable to account for inefficient manual and portal sampling techniques and, possibly, "cleaner" perpetrators.
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Since different molecules may have similar (drift times, IMS inherently has less chemical specificity than MS. In fact, the committee estimates that a typical tandem mass spectrometer (two mass spectrometer analyzers arranged in series, or a single trapping spectrometer making tandem analyses in time)
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Broader range of threat substances concurrently detectable. The flexibility and chemical specificity inherent in MS-basec} systems make them capable of concurrently detecting a much broacler range of threat substances than IMS, including a broader range of explosives, chemical warfare agents, and biological agents.
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Recommendation 2: TSA should establish mass spectrometry as a core technology for identifying an expanded list of explosives, as well as chemical and biological agents. Specifically, TSA should · Create a prioritized list of threat materials that are likely to fit a residue scenario and a second list of materials that are not likely to fit the scenario Determine appropriate MS sampling procedures, inlet configurations, ionization methods, and analysis strategies for relevant materials on this list.
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Finding 3: The many trace detection tasks that can be envisioned in airports will require MS-based detection systems with various levels of cost and performance; in some cases, years of R&D and testing may be required to produce MS instruments with the necessary specifications. Recommendation 3: If TSA wishes to improve its trace detection capabilities, it should deploy MSbased detectors in a phased fashion, with successive generations of instruments addressing lower quantities of an expanded list of threat materials and more sophisticated security tasks.
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8 Opportunities to Improve Airport Passenger Screening the abided expense associated with sample collection and preparation. In a large urban airport, 5 to 10 instruments might be required, riepencling upon the extent to which remote sampling could be utilized.
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