MIT Media Lab researchers have worked hard to develop a wireless system that is going to use RFID tags that are on billions of products. They are doing this so that they can sense potential food contamination. Food safety incidents have actually made headlines around the globe so far. They are said to cause illness and even death every single year. Back in 2008, 50,000 babies in China were sent to hospital because they had formula that had been contaminated with melamine. This is a compound that is used in plastics and it is incredibly toxic if you have it in high concentrations. More than 100 people in Indonesia have also died from drinking alcohol that has been contaminated.

The researcher's own system is known as RFIQ and this includes a reader. It detects any signals that come from RFID tags. They are focusing on baby formula and alcohol at the moment but there are talks that in the future, consumers may be able to have their own reader. They can then use it on any food related product to find out if it is contaminated or to even find out if the food is spoilt. Of course, if you work in technical recruitment or even in engineering recruitment then you will know what a step forward this can be.

The technology really does hinge on the fact that certain changes in the signals came from a RFID tag and that this corresponds to certain contaminants. It is a machine model that is learning from the correlations from the past, and on top of this, it also has the ability to detect whether a material is pure or not. This is an amazing step forward to say the least and only time will tell how far this could go.