taggant concentration of 500,000 parts per million (in other words, one-half), which is 2,000 times greater than the official recommended taggant concentration of 250 parts per million. Taggants for brand protection When used as a chemical marker, taggants can be used for authentication of products and documents. Taggants are sometimes used by brand owners and governments to authenticate commonly counterfeited items. Taggants are integrated into the material of the item itself or into the packaging. Once integrated, the taggants can only be verified with specially engineered readers. Common taggant anticounterfeiting features Taggants are uniquely encoded materials or chemistries that act as virtual "fingerprints" Taggants can be invisible to the naked eye or visible (covert or overt) Taggants can be detectable with specially-engineered equipment or detected with low cost detectors for field testing Taggant technology should be extremely difficult to reverse engineer Once integrated into an item, taggants should mark the item permanently and should not be removable Common taggant anticounterfeiting applications Tax Stamp authentication Banknote authentication Cigarette anticounterfeiting Alcohol anticounterfeiting Pharmaceutical anticounterfeiting Fast-moving consumer goods anticounterfeiting Building materials Consumer products References External links Institute of Explosive Manufacturers – Taggant history and background Explosive detection Forgery Identifiers