Fingerprints say more than you know

You Won't Believe What Fingerprints Show

Fingerprints reveal much more than an identifying swirl of lines that is unique to each person. Thanks to the latest technology, British researchers have examined the chemical components of fingerprints that also reveal clues to a person's lifestyle.

The BBC News reports that researchers at Kings College, London are uncovering how our fingerprints change with age, smoking, drug use and even the use of personal grooming products.

The work will also allow police to obtain copies of fingerprints left at a crime scene that have gone unnoticed for days or even weeks and possibly on guns and bomb fragments, which are among the most difficult to recover.

When we touch something and leave our fingerprint, what we are leaving is fat molecules or lipids. "There are a lot of lipids in fingerprints, and there are a lot of possibilities for that," study leader Dr. Sue Jickells told BBC technology correspondent Mark Ward. One such lipid that is heavily present in fingerprints is squalene.

The team has figured out that squalene breaks down after a few days, making it harder to find the fingerprints using traditional methods. But knowing how these organic compounds decompose is allowing the researchers to find ways of getting good quality evidence from old prints.

Other interesting facts:
--Adults, children and the elderly lay down different sorts of organic compounds in the prints so police will soon be able to tell an age range based only on fingerprints.

--Drug users and smokers excrete metabolized products of the drugs they used that are visible in fingerprints. The researchers are working to figure out how drug use changes fingerprints.