Soil forensic laboratories

Tibbett, M., Carter, D. O., Haslam, T., Major, R., and Haslam, R. (2004). A laboratory incubation method for determining the rate of microbiological degradation of skeletal muscle tissue in soil. /. Forensic Sci. 49, 560-565. 

Commercial companies in the United States, Europe, and Japan are selling vast quantities of compact spot test systems to solve problems in clinical analysis, in control tests of air quality, in food, water, and soil analysis, and in forensic laboratories. 

Fibers and garments recovered as evidence may have been exposed to sunlight or water or buried for extended periods of time. Despite the significance of textile fibers as trace evidence, there have been few studies of the effects of the environment in which fibers are found on the procedures used to identify and compare them. It was the object of this study to expose various synthetic fibers to a soil environment and determine the effects of biodeterioration in such an environment on the analytical methods used to identify and compare synthetic fibers in the forensic science laboratory. 

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