A FEMALE passenger claims she was given a full body search and treated like “a criminal” after her perfume gave a false positive in an airport’s explosives test.
Australian entertainer Rhonda Burchmore said that she had to hand over her licence as well during the ordeal at Dubbo Airport in New South Wales.
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Security officers using explosives trace-detection technology use swabs to check randomly selected passengers passing through security screening.
In Rhonda’s case, the false positive was apparently sparked by an ingredient in her high-end Chanel perfume.
She explained in a Tweet: “I just had to be frisked 3 times and body searched at Dubbo airport, my licence taken and report written after the alarm went off 3 times which took over 30 mins only to find out it was the nitrate content of my Chanel perfume – they said it happens with expensive perfume !”
The entertainer later told 2GB’s Ben Fordham the dramatic experience was “extraordinary”.
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She said: “This machine went green and the alarm went off and I giggled, the first time.
“Then the second time, she (the security officer) said, ‘We’ll have to do it again, you’ve got something on you.”
She said she was subjected to a full-body search and made to hand over her driver’s licence in front of a crowd.
Rhonda added: “I had as many as six security people come around like I was a criminal.”
Eventually, she was told she was in the clear.
She said: “(They said) ‘We can’t find anything, the only thing it obviously is … have you got expensive perfume?’”
“I said, ‘Yeah, well, I’ve got Chanel’.
“It was the nitrate in my Chanel perfume, either on my body, or I’ve got the little portable one, that triggered the whole thing.
“Apparently if I had Impulse or a cheap one from Chemist Warehouse it wouldn’t have. There’s something special that Coco Chanel has in it.”
News.com.au has contacted the Australian Border Force for comment, and Sun Online Travel has contacted Chanel for additional comments.
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It isn’t the first time ingredients in beauty products have triggered a false reading in airport explosives screening.
An American woman was left rattled after she tested positive for explosives at an airport in Columbus, Ohio, in 2013, later discovering the false positive was triggered by her hand cream.
Oklahoma broadcaster News9 reported security officers took the woman into a room and patted her down for 15 minutes before she was cleared.
She was told her hand cream, which she had slathered on her hands and arms before heading to the airport, contained glycerine, which was an ingredient in explosives.
The same thing happened to an NBC employee who was travelling through Dallas-Fort Worth airport in Texas the same year.
A spokesman for the US Transport Security Administration told Texas’ NBC5 that glycerine, which was found in many lotions and beauty products, was “not (an) uncommon problem” when it came to false positives for explosives.
“(The screening technology) must be sensitive enough to detect even the slightest presence of explosives on a passenger or a piece of luggage,” the spokesman said.
“Due to this sensitivity, on occasion, commonly used items can render a false positive alarm during screening.”
News9 reported some heart medicines containing nitroglycerines have set off the explosives sensors, as well as lawn fertiliser on golf shoes and golf clubs.
Here are some of the things that could trigger a false positive in an airport explosives test.
Sun Online Travel previously revealed that lie detectors could be used at airports to catch out terrorists.
This article was originally published by news.com.au and was reproduced with permission.
