«I think it's a very clever idea,» says Dean Rosenthal, a molecular biologist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Van der Schans and Rosenthal say they can also conceive
of skin tests for other chemical agents, such as
phosgene, or industrial pollutants such as ethylene oxide — anything that has a way
of getting under the skin.
The country's entire supply is produced in one well - guarded and famously secretive facility in Alabama, where truckloads
of common table sugar are shipped in weekly, to be modified via a complex chemical process involving chlorine and
phosgene gas.