PIXABAY, EDARCell phone cases are the silent witnesses to the foods we eat and the chemicals we touch, according to a November 14 study published in PNAS. Researchers have found The researchers report that molecular signatures found on cell phone cases could pinpoint the personal habits of 39 volunteers, down to their skincare products, diet choices, and medications.
“You can imagine a scenario where a crime scene investigator comes across a personal object—like a phone, pen or key—without fingerprints or DNA,” coauthor Pieter Dorrestein of the University of California, San Diego, said in a press statement. “So we thought—what if we take advantage of left-behind skin chemistry to tell us what kind of lifestyle this person has?”
In a 2015 study, Dorrenstein and colleagues demonstrated that the molecular components of cosmetic products remain prevalent on our skin, even days after we’ve stopped using them. Piggybacking off that research, the team resolved to test cell phones for molecular signatures. After swabbing four spots on each person’s cell phone and eight spots on each person’s right hand, the researchers used mass spectrometry to detect individual molecules in each sample. They found that each participant had a unique chemical signature that could be distinguished from others in 98 percent of cases, and matched back to their own phones in 69 percent of cases.
They were also able to detect some personal habits: whether the cell phone owner was a coffee or tea drinker, whether he or she used anti-depressants or bug spray creams, and whether he or she had recently eaten spicy food. The study—which is due to continue with examinations of the wallets and keys of an additional 80 individuals, according to the press release—could be a boon for law enforcement officials, and useful for monitoring public health and environmental pollutants.
