Sarah Mackin runs a Q-tip-type swab around the inside of a tiny plastic baggie that appears to be empty. She spreads whatever the swab picked up onto a test strip that resembles a Band-Aid. Mackin slides the test strip into a buzzing machine about the size of a boxed take-home pie.-- initially marketed to the military and hazmat crews fighting bioterrorism or explosions — may help in the fight against one of Boston's top killers: fentanyl.
"Oh yeah," Mackin says, nodding her head."So, there’s multiple kinds of opioid analgesics and multiple kinds of synthetic fentanyls in this sample that was sold as heroin. It’s kind of an example of what the drug landscape looks like here." In Bri’s case, one sample showed no trace of drugs at all, one tested positive for a medical-grade fentanyl, and the third showed traces of something Bri learned is in the range of carfentanil."Now, I’m going to be honest. If I was sick and I had one bag of dope on me and you told me there’s carfentanil in there, I’m not going to lie and say I wouldn't use it," Bri says."But I would know to not put the entire thing in.
That warning may draw people seeking an ever more powerful high. But Traci Green, who is a researcher in emergency medicine at Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University, says her own work and studies out of Europe show that when drug users can test what they buy, they seek dealers with the safest supply.
For Boston, the device was purchased through a grant from RIZE Massachusetts, a foundation focused on combating the opioid epidemic.
commonhealth The article talks about the $65k price as a disadvantage, but it seems like a pretty cheap price if it saves even one life. And this is a compact, sensitive mass spec that requires little training to use. Seems like a bargain to me. Although I wonder what calibration costs are.
commonhealth I would like to see it used to create chemical fingerprints so patterns and tracing insights become visible.
commonhealth Great idea... test their drugs when giving away free needles...
commonhealth Problem will be solved if Fucking China would stop producing all the fentanyl in the world. It’s part of their plan to devastate the United States
commonhealth since the Russians had fentanyl-like opioids (maybe even just fentanyl itself) in an aerosolized form back in 2002 during the theater crisis, it's actually probably one of only a few true weaponized chemicals used in the 21st century (Sarin, Cl, VX, a few blister agents in Syria)
commonhealth lipiroy
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