A careless touch could be all police or insurance companies need to determine not only your identity, but also your criminal history and certain medical conditions.

"A fingerprint is only good to identify a criminal if you already have their fingerprint on file," says David Russell, a professor at the University of East Anglia.

Russell, along with Dr Pompi Hazarika, helped developed the new technique, which appears in the German journal, Angewandte Chemie.

The new technique attaches the iron oxide particles to antibodies and suspends them both in a liquid solution, which is then drizzled over a fingerprint.

If the chemical that a specific antibody targets is present, the molecules latch onto it and glow.

So far the scientists can detect five different drugs: THC (marijuana), cocaine, nicotine, methadone and a derivative of methadone.