Using carbon dating to show that tramadol is NOT a natural product afterall

Remember that debate whether tramadol was really a natural product or not? Michael Spiteller and co-workers at TU Dortmund used accelerator mass spectrometry to analyze the isotopes of carbon found in tramadol found in the soil to show that tramadol is NOT a natural product. This is all based on the fact that natural organic compounds that are biosynthesized in living organisms contain amounts of 14C-radioisotope close to that of the environment.

ACIE paper