Things You Drink Can Be Used To Track You 202
sciencehabit writes with an intriguing story about the potential of figuring out where people have been by examining their hair: "That's because water molecules differ slightly in their isotope ratios depending on the minerals at their source. 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." Or frame someone by slipping them water from every country on the terrorist watchlist.
subject goes here... (Score:5, Funny)
That's tough to swallow...
Airport variaty (Score:4, Funny)
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If you're a female... eewww.
If you're a male... double eewww.
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I've heard it can be used at a mixer of sorts for a proper drink...but haven't tried it that often.
Hmm....
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How much water is used to make soda ? beer ? Juice ?
Will water move through beef or other imported vegetables and be tested in our urine?
There are too many disparate sources for water or "Second Hand Water" for this to ever hold up in court. I hope.
One sec... knock on the door...
- Dan.
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And as someone else mentioned, it is far easier to give someone water -- or plant DNA evidence, for example -- than to plant, say, fingerprints.
Typo - that's "beer is a vegetable" (Score:2)
Imported, domestic, bottled somewhere across the continent, Rocky Mountain Spring Water, whatever.
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Uh, they do. It's called "fertilizer".
allergy to water (Score:2)
Well, one of Polish kings, Leszek Bialy, sent the pope an opinion of his medics that claimed that he suffers from an allergy to water, and, because during a campaign in Palestine an uninterrupted supply of beer or wine would be hard to assure, he can't go to the crusade there.
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CSI Miami: "Hey, either the murderer lives in Colombia or he just ate some Campbell Soup from New Jersey. Let's indict the coke-using bastard anyway!"
Detective: "I'd say ... puts on sunglasses ... how do you like THEM tomatoes!"
Or... (Score:4, Funny)
Let's hope there aren't any murders near the Coca-cola bottling plant!
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You should move to Deer Park... none of that worry and fuss here!
Oh boy I can hear it now... (Score:4, Funny)
My toilet telling asking me... "How was your trip to Tokyo?"
or the next version that checks the stool... "Rosanna the cow hopes that she was a tasty treat!"
Wouldn't it be ironic (Score:2)
If this method could tell us if it rained on your wedding day?
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If this method could tell us if it rained on your wedding day?
Nope...that would be a coincidence. Still. Fifteen years later.
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If this method could tell us if it rained on your wedding day?
Nope...that would be a coincidence. Still. Fifteen years later.
Isn't it ironic that a song about irony misses the point completely? ;)
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Unless this method turns out to be totally bogus, in which case the result *would* be a coincidence.
Liquid Tin Foil (Score:5, Funny)
That's why I only drink liquid tin foil.
Who's laughing now?
Re:Liquid Tin Foil (Score:5, Funny)
That's why I only drink liquid tin foil.
Who's laughing now?
Magneto.
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Aluminum foil, on the other hand...
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Then how did Doofenshmirtz attract a giant ball of aluminum foil with a giant magnet, then? Huh?
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Depends on whether you are talking about ferro-magnetic permanent magnets, rare-earth permanent magnets, regular electromagnets, superconducting electromagnets, regular superconductors or magnetars.
(A regular superconductor is anti-magnetic - it will repel ALL magnetic fields.)
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Another fun but pointless fact: tin foil isn't made of aluminum.
Re:Liquid Tin Foil (Score:5, Funny)
That's because you are using substandard tin foil. The best tin foils are made of mahogany.
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Similar use recently (Score:5, Informative)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/england/bristol/10332975.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Basically some bones from a German cathedral could be places as having lived in England due to isotopes in the teeth.
This helped confirm the bones were of a 10th century English princess.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/england/bristol/10332975.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Basically some bones from a German cathedral could be places as having lived in England due to isotopes in the teeth.
This helped confirm the bones were of a 10th century English princess.
It was that, and the label on the box which read "10th Century English Princess".
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Funnily enough they were actually labeled (with her name though). It was to confirm. Can't be trusting labels.
Not enough degrees of freedom (Score:4, Informative)
This may be forensically useful, but don't think of it like a fingerprint or a DNA match. There's only one degree of freedom here -- whether the water is isotopically "heavy" or "light". All of a person's water co9nsumption history is mixed up into one number.
So you won't be able to tell the difference between, say, a person who lived all year in Illinois (with a moderate isotope ratio) and a person who flies back and forth between Montana and Florida (who'd have a mix of "heavy" and "light" water in their system.)
Hair grows (Score:2)
Hair grows at a rate of about a couple millimeters per week. Your frequent flier would have striped hair.
I don't know what's the minimum amount of hair needed for this test, but it's certainly possible to cut hair samples smaller than what it grows during an airplane trip from Montana to Florida.
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So you won't be able to tell the difference between, say, a person who lived all year in Illinois (with a moderate isotope ratio) and a person who flies back and forth between Montana and Florida (who'd have a mix of "heavy" and "light" water in their system.)
Unless the technicians are clever enough to check multiple sections of the person's hair.
Re:Not enough degrees of freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Not true. The fact that the oxygen isotopes are bound into hair means that we have some kind of a time reference.
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Good point re the use of hair to provide a timeline, but if you figure the average human consumes about 1.5 kg of water a day, and contains about 60 kg of water, that means the water has a residence time of about a month and a half. It'll take that long to "flush out" your system.
And the "one degree of freedom" problem still limits the location accuracy of this. Check the map in the original article [acs.org]. The isotopic ratio of water is the same in Florida as in Texas; the same in Boston as in San Francisco.
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Actually no! Check Figure 2 in the original article [acs.org]. Hydrogen and oxygen isotopes are linearly related to each other in natural waters, following the "Global Meteoric Water Line". If you measure delta-2H, you know delta-18O or vice versa.
Polonium 210 (Score:5, Interesting)
This has been done before: in the investigation of the poisoning of Alexander Livinenko, the traces of Polonium 210 left wherever the poisoner(s) went gave the UK authorities a very detailed trail to work with - one that not only showed the exact teapot used for the poisoning, but also provides a fingerprint of where the Po-210 was produced and at what date.
It's quite a fascinating story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko_poisoning#Polonium_trails [wikipedia.org]
Simply substitute Po-210 for something not deadly and you have a wonderful tracking mechanism.
Re:Polonium 210 (Score:4, Insightful)
Simply substitute Po-210 for something not deadly and you have a wonderful tracking mechanism.
Ummm, No see Po-210 is rare as opposed to say water which covers most of the earth's surface.
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Forensics (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see this science being abused. Whether your body contains a certain chemical signature or not is still circumstantial evidence, but increasingly our justice system (like many countries) are using it to give carte blanche access to a person's private information and life. Worse, if the request is later determined to have been falsified or exaggerated, the evidence gathered as a result of that request is still considered valid for the persecution of not just the original crime, but anything else uncovered as a result.
Thanks to shows like CSI and confidence in science, we want DNA samples, hair, urine, and a billion other things -- and believe that their presence somehow proves or disproves guilt. This is despite the fact that such evidence can be manufactured with ease -- the prime example being Photoshop for photographs, but virtually every technology you have around you can be used against you in some fashion or manipulated to imply or explicitly state something that is not true. Yet the courts rarely ask that samples be tested for contamination, or refuse to re-hear cases where the lab clearly and undeniably compromised the results.
It used to be that testimony was the primary vehicle in obtaining a conviction. Now we're increasingly using evidence that neither the judge, jury, defense, or even prosecution fully understands to take away other people's freedoms, sometimes under false pretext. While this particular technology is neither good nor bad, the system that will incorporate its use may be fundamentally flawed.
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I drink a lot of water at work. But I have a gallon of water that rode with me on the 1000 mile trip to where I live now. It sits in my closet, on the off chance that my water goes off. I drink that, and I have a beautiful stripe of isotopes which indicate I spent a few days 1000 miles away.
Combine that with all the bottled water people drink, and all the pre-packaged drinks, and it's useless for much of anything. If I'm a mixture of water isotopes from Atlanta and Upst
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Such information could help prosecutors place a suspect at the scene of a crime, or prove the innocence of the accused.
Evidence that places someone in the general area of a city/region does not place them at the scene of a crime. Also, given the ease at which it can be manipulated, it certainly doesn't prove anything either.
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Actually, I have heard that prosecutors hate CSI type shows because jurors want some technician to come in and say, "the pesticide oh his wheels indicate that he was at the farm at the time of the crime." Luck breaks like that only happen on... well, CSI.
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I wish people would watch Law & Order more. Yeah, I'll sometimes sit through an episode of CSI but at the end of it, they always catch the murder and the murder always confesses at the end, saying they just had to kill or some other bullshit.
OTOH, L&O follows detectives around as they talk to one person who leads them to another and then they go back and, you know, acts like a detective. That and not every episode ends with "Yeah! we got that son of a bitch!" Some have been real downers which doe
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Worse yet, since CSI came out forensic investigators have noticed a marked rise in the number of cases where Gloves and or Bleach were used at the scene of the crime. The Bleach is supposed to damage the DNA evidence they might leave behind.
Anyways if you want to game this system, do you drink water only where you live, and bring bottles filled at home with you, or just always buy bottled water and never drink tap?
As others have mentioned they'd probably get a lot of false positives from the local bottling
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Thanks to shows like CSI and confidence in science, we want DNA samples, hair, urine, and a billion other things -- and believe that their presence somehow proves or disproves guilt.
For what it's worth, prosecutors are complaining that due to shows like CSI, juries are more reluctant to accept conventional circumstantial evidence, so it might not be quite that simple.
Of course, having seen lots of stupid jury decisions going both ways, I'm not sure that I'd actually want a jury trial if I was ever accused of a serious crime.
Since when are oxygen and hydrogen ... (Score:2)
considered minerals?
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Source, when it comes to natural water, refers to the headwaters [wikipedia.org]. Thus, this sentence says that the isotope ratios of water vary depending on the minerals present in the ground where the water fell out of the air originally. The second sentence is poorly worded and should have said that the human body breaks down water into its constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen to construct the proteins. As a result, you can tell from the isotope ratio in the water where it fell originally.
HTH.
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1) Water at spring A has more calcium (a mineral) than water at spring B
2) Because of this, and some chemical processes, the water at spring A has a higher percentage of heavy water (deuterium oxide) than the water at spring B (this has a 50%+ chance of being incorrect, but let's stick with it for the example's sake)
3) Person X consumes water from spring A and person Y consumes water from spring B.
4) The metabolisms of the two persons break down the water and put it into the proteins in their respective cel
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Nope. Different isotopes of the same element have the same chemistry, so chemical processes won't alter isotope ratios. This is an important feature of using isotopes as tracers, since generally the tracer elements will be subject to a lot of chemical processes -- like being absorbed into the body and incorporated in to hair.
It turns out that TFA (which is just a bad summary of an actual paper) appears to have introduced the "minerals" bit. Minerals aren't involved; different water sources just have differe
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Ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water? (Score:4, Funny)
General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Well, no, I can't say I have.
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I only drink the blood of my enemies.
And occasionally a strawberry Yoo-hoo.
You've got to be kidding me. (Score:2)
And what if the minerals at the source of the water are appreciably the same? Reliably being tracked back to a handful of collection sites across the US doesn't exactly equate to "placing someone at the scene of a crime".
If you look at the heat map included with the article, the entirety of Florida is indicated as having the same expected water composition. Similarly for most of Texas, and wide swaths of the Midwest / Central US.
So if someone commits a crime in Tallahassee, and I buy bottled water at
Prove you were in Atlanta (Score:2)
"There a murder in Atlanta, and I can prove from your hair sample and this expensive test that you were in Atlanta at some point!"
"Or you proved that I drank a bunch of Coke bottled in Atlanta, and that you like to waste tax payer dollars on silly tests which prove nothing."
... can preserve the record of a person's travels. (Score:2)
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 the travels of things people drink.
Fixed that for you. This would work if we didn't ship products throughout the country. Get pulled over for a DUI, "Couldn't have been me, check my hair! I've been in Fort Collins!"
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Fixed that for you.
You not only fixed it, you also exploded the heads of at least a dozen grammar nazis.
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Yea, it was supposed to have strikethrough, but I stubmitted before preview.
amazingly enough (Score:5, Funny)
researchers have used this technique to uncover the shocking truth that a small hamlet in southern maine is actually the residence of tens of millions of people
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=poland%20spring [google.com]
Can't catch me (Score:3, Funny)
Baldness FTW
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Ok, not sure if this is a joke... but ouch. There has to be some kind of hair remover that's not going to stretch your sack when you use it.
an opportunity for profit... (Score:2)
... a water bottling plant that bottles water from every major municipalty and mixes them together.
Some BIG assumptions there.... like bottled water. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Some BIG assumptions there.... like bottled wat (Score:5, Funny)
I've never left the US, Canada and Mexico, but my hair would say I spend a little time each year in Speyside, Scotland drinking water that is anywhere from 12-18 years old, usually Macallan.
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To be fair, they do attempt to address that, though they do so only in the average case. Actually a big part of the paper [acs.org] is exactly that: an attempt "to assess the links between purchase location and the isotopic composition of beverages" and given that purchase location may not be the same as bottling location, whether or not "these beverages could have a confounding impact on the overall isotopic composition of a consumer’s fluid intake".
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Congratulations for coming up with the same obvious problem everyone else did. Did you, by any chance, read the part of the paper where they discuss this problem and its ramifications and then test how well the isotope ratios in tap water function as a proxy for the isotope ratios in purchased bottled beverages?
So...according to this... (Score:2)
I spend quite a bit of time in Jalisco, Mexico.
Stupid (Score:2)
0.05% of the atoms in my body are replaced by water I drank at the scene of a crime, and the CSIs think they're going to ignore the other 99.95%?
There is such a thing as contempt of court, you know.
What about bottled drinks? (Score:2)
If you only drink mainstream bottled beverages, wouldn't that rule out any local factor in what you are drinking? "Well, he looks like he was drinking some beer brewed in Ireland..." Similarly, Dasani/Sparkletts/Arrowhead all have relatively large sales areas, don't they?
So will my fondness for Guinness... (Score:2)
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Brewed under license... New South Wales.
I'm untrackable, then, because... (Score:2)
... I only drink distilled water.
(Yes, I really do. I don't like the taste of mineralized "drinking" or tap water, and contrary to marketing the mineralization has no health benefits.)
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So what if it does? I know, you think you're being funny, but really. They won't be isotopes indicative of where I am or live, will they? They'd be indicative of whatever water source the distiller (Niagara, DS Waters) is using. So DHS would wind up sending the troops to some place on the other side of the country.
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Yeah it was a joke, intended to point out that "isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen" are not removed by distilling the water, because the water is made up of those "isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen."
Most bottled water you buy is bottled very near to the point of purchase, so it would still probably give a decent location as long as the signature was good enough to not provide 500 possible matches.
As has already been discussed ad nauseam here, the technique as described wouldn't allow them to track your location
The perfect crime... (Score:2)
Quit Calling it That! (Score:2)
Or frame someone by slipping them water from every country on the terrorist watchlist.
Small detail, but it still peeves me:
Countries aren't on the terrorist watch list, people are.
Countries are on the State Sponsors of Terror list.
Bald will be the new radical (Score:2)
For obvious reasons bald is the next rebellious hair style.
You hate America if you.. (Score:2)
Drink only bottled water, what are you hiding?
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
A major component of most things you drink is water.
Most things you drink aren't bottled in your home town. (Including bottled water, if you're into that sort of thing.)
If somehow this technique were to be come a common defense tool, then someone planning a crime could shrewdly stockpile tap water from a city with a distinct signature that isn't where the crime will take place.
It might be marginally useful as a tool in a civil case if you want to convince the jury where someone was (but probably not if you want to convince them where he/she wasn't); I would hope it would be considered too inconclusive to be used in a criminal trial.
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If somehow this technique were to be come a common defense tool, then someone planning a crime could shrewdly stockpile tap water from a city with a distinct signature that isn't where the crime will take place.
I'd be impressed if you could stockpile significant amounts of water without leaving evidence in the form of empty containers, palates of water, shipping receipts, purchase receipts, and loyalty card information.
It's not that hard to destroy evidence. The hard part is destroying evidence without creating even more evidence.
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Depending on your situation, it may not be that hard. For example, the city of Minneapolis, MN gets its water supply for the Mississippi River. A few miles away, most of the southern suburbs get their water from the Jordan and Prairie Du Chien-Jordan aquifers. On one hand, that may make it easier to pinpoint where someone is from, but on the other hand it also means I would not have to travel far to get water from a very different source.
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Or he could shave his head.
Leave Brittney alone!
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Or you just brought bottled water from wherever it is you want them to believe you were while you were away. Obviously, this water stuff can't be used conclusively on its own.
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If your accuser says you're from Detroit but your hair says your from Three Mile Island...
Actually, you'd be screwed.
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"Is there a timestamp attached to those water molecules?"
Well, there sort of is. Hair grows at the root only, so if I watch how the patterns change moving from the root of a hair to the tip, I can get a fuzzy sort of timeline of your waters' origin. Circumstances where that's precise enough to be useful, though, seem narrow.
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Uh... the USG claims you went to Afghanistan to train with terrorists for a month, you just went to London like your last ticket purchased in the US says... then you use the hair.
If the hair says London, the government knows you either had a massive water truck with you or that you are telling the truth. OTHO, if the hair says Afghanistan then they have circumstantial evidence and might have caught you in a lie. In the end, it's better screening out than in or catching people in lies.
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Yeah, you also have to think about how much of your water comes from drinking water and how much comes from food. Most food is local (especially things like bread), but even produce is often not from that far off (bananas excluded, obviously).
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Most food is not local, not even close. Take a look at the small print when you're at the supermarket; around here (central NY state) most of it, especially during the winter and spring, comes from places like California, Florida, Mexico, Argentina, even China. Bread is one of the few exceptions (and the wheat isn't grown locally, either).
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Your defense strategy if caught training with terrorists would be to lie about what country yuo were in?
Good luck with that.
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I think it would be more, which terrorists were in which countries when. But also useful for someone reentering the US with an unknown travel history.
Is shaving your head destroying evidence? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say the "identifying where a bottle of water is from" part may have some scientific validity. Assuming that the isotope ratios in the oxygen molecules in your blood match the water you're drinking is more dubious - you're also breathing air, which may have different ratios, plus your body would also be exchanging liquids between cells and bloodstream, so there's a long slow storage period. How that relates by the time the stuff gets out to your hair is even more speculative. The real question is how
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Dude, don't drink them! They're valuable! Do you know how hard it is to get illicit liquids like water into the US these days?
I had bottled water in my checked luggage seized last time I flew back from South America... maybe they thought I might have dissolved drugs in them or something. I figured it was better to let them keep them than ask for the water b
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That is exactly why they take it, because they know you're in a hurry and can't put up a fight.
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That is quite unnecessary; the officials in all Western states are working hard to bring the 3rd world here. All we have to do is lose a few more jobs and repeal minimum wage laws and I think we're all set.
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Most people get most of their water from food and food is often approximately local, especially things like the water in soup and bread.
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They can install sensors that can collect samples from the bathrooms at airports (or onboard airplanes themselves) as everyone needs to go.
And this high tech, extremely expensive system can be overcome by...holding it. You should work for the TSA.