Abstract

Collection and identification of pollen is becoming important in forensic applications. Many criminal cases have been reported to link suspects to the crime scene by analysis of pollen. Several methods have been used in the pollen collection and analysis, but they are expensive and tedious. Therefore, it is important to develop a simple method to collect pollen grains from clothes. We tried to recover pollen from clothing surface by using the sticky tapes method. The tape adhesive method has been widely used for sample collection for various purposes, but the efficiency of recovery of invisible pollen from clothes has rarely been reported. Therefore, to test the efficiency of the tape adhesive method in recovering pollen from clothes is important. The first author wore clothes that were made from textile S made by the mixture of cotton 60% and polyester fiber 40% to collect pollen from 26 different areas mostly in the northern part of Taiwan and then used cellophane tape D (Sirchie Finger Print Lab., Inc-No. 131LT4) to recover them from different body parts. Twenty-six pollen taxa were detected in different parts of clothes depending upon what kind of plant the first author stayed near. From the results, we concluded that the tape adhesive method is suitable in recovering pollen from clothes. We have suggested that the tape adhesive method could be part of methods for collecting pollen from clothes of suspects. It is simpler, faster and less expensive than other methods.

中文摘要

孢粉之蒐集與鑑定在刑事鑑識界逐漸受到重視，一些犯罪案件研究報告說明孢粉分 析能將嫌犯與犯罪現場連結。目前幾種孢粉蒐集與分析的方法，過於昂貴或耗時，因此，研發一種簡易的衣物孢粉蒐集法更顯重要。本研究嘗試利用膠帶黏取法蒐集衣物表面之孢粉，膠帶黏取法早已被廣泛使用在不同標的簡易蒐集，但其在蒐集細微孢粉之使用效率，則鮮有研究發表。是故，研究膠帶黏取法蒐集衣物上孢粉的效率是重要的。作者以常用之紡織材料進行實驗比較後，使用混紡梭布料S (棉60%、多聚酯纖維40% 之梭織布料) 製成之衣物在以北台灣為主的26 處地區採樣，並以黏取效果較佳之膠帶D(Sirchie Finger Print Lab., Inc-No. 131LT4)，從身體上不同的部位取得孢粉。經實驗獲得26 組樣區孢粉與樣區現生植物種類相符。我們建議可以使用膠帶黏取法採取嫌犯衣物上的孢粉，比較其他方法，更為簡單、快速及成本低廉。

Keyword: Forensic Science, Pollen Evidence, Textile, Criminal Environment, Taiwan.