Cocaine confiscated on the way from Colombia to Spain AP Photo by Jairo Castilla

A study of randomly selected Spanish euro notes carried out by chemists at the University of Valencia has shown that they contained traces of cocaine at an average concentration of 155 microgrammes, which is the highest rate in Europe.

“The latest technology means we can now carry out quantitative analysis of cocaine traces on any bank note, and as a result we can confirm that – at least in Spain – traces of the drug are found not only on notes that have been in direct contact with it, but on nearly all the notes in circulation,” said Miguel de la Guardia, co-author of the study. He explained that this was due to “cross contamination” between bank notes, as well as in money counting machines used by banks.

The study also analyses previous studies highlighting the concentrations of cocaine found in different currencies around the world, as well as the results of the random sample of Spanish bank notes gathered by the Valencian chemists, which detected concentrations of up to 889 microgrammes of the drug on some notes.

In the United States, which has the most highly contaminated bank notes of any country in the world, dollar bills containing more than 1,300 microgrammes of cocaine have been registered, although the average values were between 2.86 and 28.75 microgrammes, varying according to the year and city.

Phew!