By Sid Perkins
The royal food taster and the proverbial canary in the coal mine: Early methods for detecting toxic substances were usually biological. Over the years, food and environmental risk assessment gradually adopted more refined techniques based on chemistry and physics, but the equipment that’s required tends to be bulky and the processes, slow.
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Now, researchers are turning back to biology—actually, to electronic mimics of sensory systems. The combination of advanced sensor materials and powerful computer chips holds forth the promise of devices that can sense threats ranging from bacteria in food to the explosives in a land mine. So-called electronic noses are today found mainly in research laboratories, but soon they’ll be sniffing their way into food-processing plants, abandoned battlefields, and maybe even doctors’ offices and home appliances.