SNIFFING OUT STOWAWAYS
One way to catch illegal immigrants is to sniff them out, says Hitachi of Tokyo (EP 1321766). Not to put too fine a point on it, when stowaways hide for long periods in an enclosed space they produce a distinctive body odour. The idea is to look for this smell signature in air samples. Immigration officials would take samples via a narrow tube that they poke through any vent into a container or a lorry. Hitachi’s device then identifies the gases in a mass spectrometer. Any trace of body-odour chemicals would prompt further checks on the container…
