Air Quality Inside Police Drug Safes and Drug Storage Areas

Abstract

Storage of drug-based evidence inside sealed safes may allow chemical vapors to accumulate, creating concerns of drug exposure by inhalation, or the possibility of cross-contamination of drug evidence. Air samples were taken from inside eight drug safes and one small storage room at nine city and country police stations, as well as a large centralized drug evidence storage vault, in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Sorbent tubes containing charcoal were used to determine whether any drug residues could be detected in the air, and to identify the types of chemicals present. Carbon traps were extracted and analyzed by LC-MS-MS for a suite of 22 licit and illicit drug residues and 2 metabolites. Carbon traps and SPME fibers were also analyzed by GC-MS for general volatile organic compound (VOC) residues. No detectable drug residues, either as airborne dust or vapor, were found in the safes, the storage room or the large central repository vault. No drugs were detected in any of the 34 urine samples collected at 8 of the 10 sampling locations, while only one of the five hair samples was positive for cocaine (9 pg/mg) provided by police exhibit officers at 3 of the 10 sampling locations. VOC analysis identified a variety of solvents associated with drug manufacture, plasticisers, personal care products and volatiles associated with plants such as cannabis. The results indicate that strong chemical odours emanating from drug safes are unlikely to be drug residues due to low volatility of drugs, and are more likely VOCs associated with their manufacture or from plant growing operations. Consideration should be given to the quality of air flow in rooms in which safes are housed and the use of air filtering inside safes to reduce the likelihood of VOC accumulation, and therefore the risk of human exposure.

Air monitoring for synthetic cannabinoids in a UK prison: Application of personal air sampling and fixed sequential sampling with thermal desorption two‐dimensional gas chromatography coupled to time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry

“…Some UK prisons have described quite high numbers of officers claiming exposure to psychoactive substances within short periods of time, which does not tally well with a surface transfer mechanism. Doran et al 20 investigated air quality inside police drug safes and storage areas and also found no evidence of drug residues in air samples. Surface drug residues were found on handles and shelving units; however, no residues (22 illicit compounds and 2 metabolites) were detected using carbon traps and analysis via LC-MS-MS.…”

Affinity Ionic Liquids for Chemoselective Gas Sensing

“…Further modification of the fiber is also available to improve selectivity of the sample [ 27 , 28 ]. Albeit it was successful in decreasing the time needed, it is still not appropriate enough for real-time application [ 29 , 30 ].…”

“…The method provides real-time, high sensitivity analysis of the molecules, yet, it fails to detect compounds of the same m/z ratio. Nevertheless, it is still widely applied in fields, including an on-line quantification of VOCs at the headspace of roasted coffee by Dryahina and coworkers [ 31 ], air quality determination at drug storage areas by Doran and coworkers [ 29 ], and breath analysis by Spanel and Smith [ 32 ].…”

Air monitoring for illegal drugs including new psychoactive substances: A review of trends, techniques and thermal degradation products

“…55 However, these studies were conducted within dwellings, a specific storage area or confined space of interest as opposed to outside and the ambient air. 44,54,56 Other forms of extraction such as accelerated solvent extraction and ultrasonic baths are used less frequently in ambient air DoA monitoring; Postigo et al 57 were able to analyse multiple illicit drugs in airborne particles using 'pressurised liquid extraction' (PLE). PLE has been used previously when analysing fine airborne PM to determine the presence of pesticides and PAHs.…”

“…62,63 LC when applied in air-monitoring studies is typically coupled to a triple quadrupole mass spectrometric system; data acquisition will typically be performed in selected reaction monitoring mode that will involve recording the transitions between the precursor ion and the two most abundant product ions for each target analyte, usually two transitions per compound. 20,31,39,49,56,64 There is a lack of published comparison between analytical instruments in this context specific to chromatographic separation; however, there have been investigations comparing GC/LC-MS systems to Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS) for air-monitoring applications. [65][66][67] The use of IMS in regard to air monitoring of illicit compounds ranges from investigations of the indoor environment (dwellings and laboratories) to being used in scanning shipments for traces of drug smuggling 53,66 as well as targeting volatile chemical signatures of illicit drugs and explosives.…”