NCJ Number
152070
Journal
Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 39 Issue: 5 Dated: (September 1994) Pages: 1215-1226
Date Published
1994
Length
12 pages
Annotation
A fluorescence method has been developed to detect ethyl centralite in gunshot residues.
Abstract
Residues were recovered from shooters' hands with cotton wool swabs. The swabs were extracted by a syringe elution procedure and the extracts cleaned by TLC. The cleaned samples were hydrolyzed in phosphoric acid at 178 degrees C for 20 minutes to yield N-ethylaniline. Any N-ethylaniline was dansylated directly on a TLC plate, which was then developed two- dimensionally. The fluorescent dansyl-N-ethylaniline spot was scraped off and extracted for fluorometric determination. The detection limits for ethyl centralite standards and spiked hand samples are 1ng and 5ng respectively. Three out of six test firings of a .38 revolver gave extracts that were found to contain ethyl centralite. One of these was swabbed 180 minutes after firing three rounds of ammunition. Although the sensitivity of this technique is still not high enough to detect ethyl centralite in all test firing samples examined, the feasibility of the application of fluorescence detection to gunshot residues analysis is high. 1 table, 6 figures, and 12 references