STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Detectors to pick up traces of bomb-making materials in sewers and waste tunnels may help in the fight against terrorism, Swedish researchers say.

Sensors that can detect chemicals used to make bombs if they are flushed down the toilet or are ingested into a person's blood stream and passed when they urinate have been developed, they said.


Such sensors have been deployed in a European Union-funded program dubbed Emphasis, installed in the sewage network to plot where the chemicals have come from and help police investigators.

The sensors sit in the flow of wastewater or sewage tunnels and detect when chemicals used in bombs pass through them, allowing investigators to determine the area of their origin.

"This would make it much harder for terrorists to make bombs at home and that's the purpose of this," Emphasis researcher Henric Ostmark told the BBC.

Emphasis, for Explosive Material Production Hidden Agile Search and Intelligence System, has already been tested in trials in Sweden, he said.

"We are seeing intelligence that could help the police," he said.