My mom recently had to do biometrics for a professional license. The finger printer said he couldn’t get a clear scan, because she had “ghost fingerprints”. In other words, her fingerprints have faded away to become nearly non-existent. He said that regular use of hand sanitizer was making this condition more common. Is he right?
My WAG is no chance.
My experience as the IT geek at a medical school where I administer and maintain 3 Biometric Hand Scanners from ADP is that it is very unlikely.
Remember these are medical professionals who use hand sanitizer all the time many times a day. Every classroom has a dispenser at the door and at the emergency stations. Many work in doctors offices and hospitals when not teaching at my school. I would think that these people would be at the highest risk if it were actually possible given how much they use.
I to use a large (to me) amount of hand sanitizer due to the number of nasty keyboards and mice I have to touch not to mention how many times I find myself under a desk and putting my hand in who knows what.
Several hundred employees and never once have I encountered anything like what was described.
Here’s a 2009 article from Scientific American on how fingerprints can be “lost.” Interesting read. Sounds like it could just be that the OP’s mom is old.
Wouldn’t the process of ‘melting away’ fingerprints necessarily be painful? (Assume no anesthetic is used, and the fingerprints are effaced instead of filled in or covered up.)
I am 99.9% positive she misinterpreted what he said, or he is bad at his job and hasn’t figured out why yet. Last time I was fingerprinted (for a volunteer position background check, nothing fun), I was asked to use the Purell before I put my fingers on the plate. I accidentally moved my finger at the wrong moment, and the computer rejected my print because I “ghosted” the image (tech’s words) - there were two fingerprints, overlapped, where there should have been one.
The Purell is so you don’t leave cooties on their machine, and to eliminate extra sweat/oil for a good image.
The “ghost prints” were in the machine, not on her fingertips.
The only thing I heard that can get rid of your fingerprints (temporarily) are pineapples.
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/Ananas_comosus.html
Not likely though that criminal masterminds would bother with the effort needed: IIUC it is not a result that you get quickly and unless one damages permanently the dermis, the fingerprints will come back.
The old rumor was that people who handled a lot of paper wore away their fingerprints due to the abrasive in writing paper.
The new rumor is that certain cancer treatments actually change a person’s fingerprints such that there is no match between the old and new (survivor) you.
Yeah, it’s true, my mom is old … even older than me in fact! The finger printer did say that was the main issue, but also said that hand sanitizers were making the problem worse. He didn’t just mean she smudged the prints as he was taking them, but that it was impossible to print her clearly. (Good thing you left that little bit of uncertainty, WhyNot.)
After some googling, I find that advice is pretty evenly split on using hand sanitizer right before being printed, with some places advising it, and others saying to avoid it. I did find several sites claiming long term use of sanitizers can wear away finger prints, or dry out your skin and make them harder to read, but they didn’t cite any evidence to support this claim.
I’d thought it had been established that the nanoparticle action of laser printer toner eroded fingerprints, but I can’t seem to find any confirmation of that. (These days far fewer people are exposed to it anyway)
Let me guess - they were using the ID1000 (or subsequent series).
Clean the platen after every use, and then accept that the software sucks.
The fingerprints are fine. We often used to resort to inking prints and then scanning them in that way.
It’s not the technology that sucks, it’s the implementation and use.
I got my fingerprints taken recently, or tried. According to the guy who was taking them, they had a really hard time getting a print. The guy asked me if I washed my hands a lot, and when I said yes, told me that next time (since these didn’t come out) I should try to minimize hand washing for a week.
(I laughed in his face. I have a two-year-old. I never use Purell, but I must wash my hands with soap twenty times a day.)
It kind of makes sense – I don’t believe the fingerprints have actually “eroded” away, but I can imagine that washing (or Purell) chaps the hands and makes microscopic bits of rough skin that interfere with taking the fingerprints. The guy even gave me some lotion to try to help, but my hands were too far gone…
ETA: Posted without reading GiantRat’s response. I think that’s what they were using. Although the guy claimed he hadn’t had trouble with the other people he’d done that day.
Just watch… gangsters will all start carrying a bottle of Purell now.
I remember Peter Jackson talking in a special on one of the LOTR dvds that the guy responsible for making all the mail armor used in the films wore away the fingerprints on his hands.
For a WEEK? No way. Especially with a two YO!
That’s interesting, because some time ago when I researched the subject, the consensus was that it was a myth that older people lose their fingerprints.
I got interested last year, when I was only 83, because I suddenly noticed that all my fingerprints were gone. I don’t know how long ago that happened, as i am not in the habit on contemplating my fingertips. I have asked some friends about my age, and sure enough, they all have lost 'em too.
So, at least in some cases that happens. Had poor Al Capone only waited before trying to burn his off with acid, he would have been OK.
They recently installed a fingerprint scanner to log us in and out of work. After testing it on one employee for about a month, they figured it was ready to go. We all had to pick a thumb or finger and they scanned both the left and right hands (in case you came to work with a band aid on, or something). Several people had real difficulty getting their prints to read. Even after they had been registered, they would have to press their finger 4 or 5 times to get the damn thing to recognize them. This one girl was getting real frustrated because her prints were so hard to read. I told her she needed to go into safe cracking.
They keep a bottle of Purell next to the reader so people won’t get squicked-out by other folks grubby mitts.
ISTR this being used in a Hawaii Five-Oh (original series) epsiode. Man the crap that I keep in my brain! :smack: