I recently flew on a commercial airline with my wife and infant child. It was the first time I’d ever flown with a baby.
Never before had I considered how different flying could be when you have a child with you.
First off, you have a whole new set of goods to carry on board and a whole new nerve-racking set of plans to try to keep the child happy and quiet in the packed quarters of an airplane.
Going through TSA screening is a whole new set of experiences, too.
When the baby isn’t big enough to walk herself through a metal detector or body scanner, you have to hold her and be inspected by a different set of tools.
On that flight, my hands were wiped with an ETD swab. It was my first direct experience with the procedure in my traveling career.
The TSA ran what is essentially a digital Q-tip over my palms to check for trace elements of explosives. It’s been doing this procedure at certain airports since 2010. Because I didn’t go through the full-body imager, I got to see it up close.
It took only a couple of seconds.
ETD
The TSA has been using ETD since way back in 2002, but because it required big, stationary analyzer machines, it was used mostly on bags and only in certain airports.
Eventually, the technology was ported down to a smaller, handheld machine, allowing screeners to use it wherever they needed.
This use of ETD accelerated because metal detectors could not spot materials like the powdered plastic explosive used by the so-called “underwear bomber” in 2009.
The same technology can be employed to detect trace elements of narcotics, as well. This dual functionality makes ETD an important security technology and an interesting investment.
Analysts at the Homeland Security Research Corporation predict the ETD market will have a CAGR of 14% until 2020. This growth will include systems sales, service, and maintenance, as well as consumables.
Trace detectors can utilize a number of different technologies to sense tiny amounts of chemicals in the environment. The most common technology is Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS). It requires radioactive equipment that cannot be field serviced nor disposed of through conventional methods.
Thermo redox detection is also used, but it’s mostly limited to explosives that contain nitrogen dioxide compounds.
Chemiluminescence sprays can detect select chemical compounds, but their sensitivity is low, and the important material requires constant resupply.
AFP and Mass Spectrometry are two new technologies in the field that are being developed for next-generation systems.
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Who?
This week, a penny stock company called Implant Sciences Corporation (OTC: IMSC) announced it scored a contract with the Netherlands to supply 75 of its handheld trace explosive detection systems to airports there. The company already sells its products in 50 countries across the globe.
Last month, Implant Sciences announced it had shipped $750,000 worth of similar systems to various customers in China. That contract included a desktop explosives and drugs trace detector and a handheld explosives detector.
Implant faces stiff competition in ETD systems from S&P 500 company FLIR Systems (NASDAQ: FLIR), which specializes mostly in thermal imaging equipment. FLIR produces the smallest and lightest trace detector on the market, but it has withstood some major controversy surrounding its international dealings.
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged FLIR with bribery when it gave Saudi Arabian interior ministers expensive trips and luxury watches. The chief of the SEC Corruption Enforcement Division called FLIR the “de facto travel agents for influential foreign officials.”
The company agreed to pay $9.5 million to settle these charges, at the same time announcing a $51 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense. The simultaneity of these announcements caused stocks to be mostly unmoved in either direction.
London-based company Smiths Detection is a subdivision of the Smiths Group (LSE: SMIN) and is the world’s largest maker of sensors that sniff out explosives, biohazards, narcotics, and chemical agents.
Last month, Smiths announced a new non-radioactive ETD scanner had received approval from the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) for passenger and cargo checkpoint screening. It is the first UK-built scanner to receive such a certification.
This little sub-section of security is an exciting combination of chemistry, sensor and analysis technology, and law enforcement, with the potential for growth every time terror threats rise. Definitely worth a second look.
Good Investing,
Tim Conneally
For the last seven years, Tim Conneally has covered the world of mobile and wireless technology, enterprise software, network hardware, and next generation consumer technology. Tim has previously written for long-running software news outlet Betanews and for financial media powerhouse Forbes.
