Sunport hand swabs to detect explosives

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) The next time you fly, be ready to show your hands because the Transportation Security Administration announced a new safety measure that can detect residue from explosives on a traveler’s hands.

TSA officers run a cotton swab over the hands, take the swab off and put it into the Explosive Trace Detection scanner.

“I’ll put [the cotton swab] into the machine and then I'll get the test results in about three seconds,” TSA officer Gary Gonzalez said.

The ETD scanner has been at the Albuquerque International Sunport for some time. It was mostly used on baggage that TSA officers wanted to take a closer look at.

It will be used more now that random travelers will be selected to have their hands swabbed and tested at airports across the country.

“It's going to be unpredictable, passengers shouldn't expect to see the same thing at every single airport,” Maggie Santiago, the deputy federal security director with the TSA, said.

The TSA said this is in response to the attempted bombing of a U.S. bound flight on Christmas Day.

Travelers can be screened anywhere from the security lines to the gates.

“When we do gate screening, we screen folks who are in line getting ready to board a flight,” Santiago explained.

Santiago said the wait for passengers who do get screened shouldn’t be too much longer than usual.

“The actual swabbing of the hands themselves only takes a couple of seconds and the amount of time it takes to read the swab in the machine is maybe another three seconds,” she said.

Reviews by people at the Sunport were mixed Thursday.

“I don't think any of the security measures they're implementing are doing any good,” Michael Campbell said.

“I think it's a good idea, I would love to know that no one on the plane has touched explosives before they got on,” Julia Simone told News 13.

The TSA expects to start using the hand swabs at airports across the country by next week.

TSA officials can’t say exactly what types of explosives they’ll test for, just that it will be a wide variety.

More than 7,000 of the scanners are in U.S. airports and another 400 will be purchased using federal stimulus money.