Forensic Science & Crime Scene Investigation

A practical, accessible guide to the preparation of balanced, scientifically-sound, expert reports in the context of occupational toxicology. Focuses on the scientist's role in establishing a causal link between exposure to toxins and an individual's ill health.

This dictionary includes definitions of all current toxicological terminology. It illustrates and describes words, concepts, acronyms, and symbols for both the toxicological theory and applied risk assessment, as well as providing guidance on the correct selection of problematic, similar, and frequently-misused terms.

A detailed description of the evidence collection protocols that will be required in criminal cases involving the release of a chemical agent, biological agent, or radiological material. This book sets the standards for the methods that may be used by local, state, and federal investigative law enforcement officers when locating and collecting hazardous evidence in airborne, liquid, solid, surface, and dermal form.

Greater attention is now paid to increasingly finer details and improved methods of describing every form of evidence. Applying physics, chemistry, and engineering to the process of analysis and interpretation, this book reflects the shift to these heightened standards and offers a starting point for significant change in the way that impression evidence is considered, utilized, and presented.

Several high-profile cases in the United States and abroad have highlighted the fact that human errors can occur, and litigation and expressions of concern over the evidentiary reliability of latent print examinations and other forensic identification procedures has increased in the last decade. This book discusses latent print examinations in detail, and provides methods to improving the practice through a systems approach.

With the invention of high resolution 3D-printing, new improvements in instrumental techniques such as Raman Spectroscopy and Mass Spectrometry, and improvements in simulation capabilities for ballistic wounding potential, entirely new fields of study have evolved. This book takes an in-depth look at the current state of gunshot residue analysis and wound ballistics, and showcases groundbreaking research in these crucial areas.

Forensic evidence can be understood as a form of knowledge and each piece of evidence has a social life and biography. Kruse shows how the crime scene examination is as crucial to the creation of forensic evidence as laboratory analyses, the plaintiff, witness, and suspect statements elicited by police investigators, and the interpretations that prosecutors and defense lawyers bring to the evidence.

This textbook includes in-depth coverage of the major topics in forensic chemistry including: illicit drugs, fibers, fire and explosive residues, soils, glass and paints, the chemistry of fingerprint recovery on porous surfaces, the chemistry of firearms analysis, as well as two chapters on the key tools of forensic science, microscopy, and chemometrics.