A wide variety of consumables (e.g., foods, beverage, cosmetics, etc.) contain contaminants, toxins, allergens, and/or other substances that are of interest to all or specific types of consumers. In particular, in recent years, an increase in the number of consumers with an identified allergy (e.g., gluten allergy, dairy allergy, fish allergy, nut allergy, soy allergy, cosmetic allergy, etc.) has contributed to a number of products that omit ingredients having an associated allergen; however, such consumers are still at risk for consuming items with a harmful substance when the items do not have adequate labeling or documentation. Various systems and methods exist for detection of toxins and harmful substances present in a sample; however, current systems and methods are deficient due to one or more of: a time-intensive manner of receiving test results, a labor-intensive manner of receiving test results, a non-automated manner of processing samples, system bulk, system non-portability, and other factors that contribute to inconveniencing a consumer using such systems.
Due to these and other defects of current systems and methods for detecting harmful substances in consumables, there is thus a need for an improved system and method for detecting target substances. This invention provides such a system and method.