Forensic chemistry description

Forensic chemistry exists where science and the law overlap. You might expect the marriage of science and the law to be an easy and natural one, but frequently it is not. The widespread perception is that science and the judicial system both exist to seek the truth, but that is an incomplete description. While tackling the definitions of scientific and legal truth is beyond the scope of this book, their intersection is at the heart of it, even when hidden behind chemical equations and reaction mechanisms. The term forensic refers to law enforcement, the judicial system, and the courts, and without/orens/c, there is no forensic chemistry. Accordingly, this brief chapter will provide you with the minimum legal context needed to explore forensic chemistry and the larger world of forensic science. 

ISO has two important functions in analytical chemistry. The first is to publish descriptions of accepted methods. These are effectively industry standard methods for particular protocols. The second is in laboratory accreditation. For a laboratory to be ISO accredited, compliance with international QA standards must be confirmed by an initial assessment and subsequently from repeated audits by an independent assessor. Since ISO has no legal or regulatory powers, the standards are voluntary. It is unlikely, however, that a forensic analysis which did not conform to an ISO standard would be upheld in court, for example. Most commercial laboratories need to be accredited to remain competitive and to deal with regulatory authorities. Most university labs are not accredited, mainly due to the time and costs involved, and also to the nonroutine nature of much university research. However, university accreditation may become a requirement in the near future, especially for publicly funded research in the UK. The details of laboratory accreditation are discussed by Christie et al. (1999) and Dobb (2004). 

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