Students invent a nail polish that can protect women against date rape predators

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Soon women could have a new weapon to fight the threat of sexual assault: nail polish.

A team of students at North Carolina State University has created a special type of nail polish that changes colour when exposed to date rape drugs like Rohypnol, Xanax and GHB.

The wearer simply dips a fingernail painted with the Undercover Colours polish into their drink to check it hasn’t been spiked.

What started out at the start of August as a university project and a Facebook page with 75 followers is now a global media news story with a growing Facebook community of over 40,000 at last count.

The four male students, all Materials Science & Engineering majors, behind Undercover Colours say on their Facebook page that they hope their product “will be able to shift the fear from the victims to the perpetrators, creating a risk that they might actually start to get caught.”

“While date rape drugs are often used to facilitate sexual assault, very little science exists for their detection. Our goal is to invent technologies that empower women to protect themselves from this heinous and quietly pervasive crime.”

The Undercover Colours team cites a statistic that says 18 per cent of women in the US will experience sexual assault during their lifetime.

Similar statistics show that sexual assault is a big problem in Australia too. According to the national Personal Safety Survey, in 2012 an estimated 17 per cent of all adult women had experienced sexual assault since the age of 15.

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