Tracking you via what you drink
In The Gaven, I wrote about how people were able to be tracked by analyzing an individual’s urine. I was told this wasn’t possible. It is.
In a study published in the current issue of The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers found that water samples from 33 cities across the United State could be reliably traced back to their origin based on their isotope ratios. And because the human body breaks down water’s constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen to construct the proteins that make hair cells, those cells can preserve the record of a person’s travels. Such information could help prosecutors place a suspect at the scene of a crime, or prove the innocence of the accused.
Read the comments from the Slashdot science story.
Read the original ScienceShot article. It’s slightly different from what I wrote about. This tracking is through the isotopes in your hair, but the tracking is the same.
