Cocaine Found on 90-Percent of U.S. Bills

Cocaine could be in your wallet or purse according to a recent test on money.


Money is known to be one of the dirtiest things we handle on a daily basis. Imagine customers who use the toilet and then pay for their food without washing their hands. Those germs pass from customer to employee to bank clerk and then right back to you. Now imagine every single U.S. bill, whether it's a George Washington or a Ben Franklin: those germs pass from person to person and acquire additional cooties in the process.

But who would have thought that 90-percent of our bills have traces of cocaine? As reported by Scientific American, a recent analysis of 234 banknotes from 18 American cities showed that very number: 90-percent of the bills tested provided evidence of cocaine. Not only is snot, urine, E.coli and other nasties covering our currency, but apparently drug dealers and recipients are using the government paper to snort, sell and buy the drug. More than 2 million Americans used cocaine in 2007 according to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy.

According to the findings presented today at the biannual meeting of the American Chemical Society, Washington D.C. (unsurprisingly) ranked the highest on the survey with a 95-percent contamination (those darn politicians). Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit followed the nation's capitol in the survey, and Salt Lake City ranked at the very bottom of the list.

The percentage of contaminated bills is also rising according to chemist Yuegang Zuo of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, who conducted the tests. The contamination isn't locked into the United States either; Canada and Brazil also show signs of the drug on their bills as well.

ADVERTISING »

Download Fast

« ADVERTISING