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CSI infographic – be amazed! (or amused – your choice) Anna Sandiford Aug 02

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Here is an interesting CSI graphic from ForensicScience.net. It does a nice job of demonstrating the internationally-recognised phenomenon “the CSI Effect”, on which I have blogged and presented and generally griped for some time (see

Part 3: CSI effect/forensic science jobs, The CSI Effect – it’s real and CSI effect: the speed and appliance of science for a selection of comments and opinions). I have now converted that negative energy into realising that what better way to raise interest in science than to utilise the interest generated by TV programs like this. (…and just take a look at the number of DNA samples that are backlogged in the US – and I’m pretty sure that’s accurate because every time I read Forensic Magazine, there’s a comment about backlogs in the order of thousands for different labs).

The CSI EffectSource: Forensic Science

Drugs, driving and saliva Anna Sandiford Aug 02

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After a brief airing on RadioLive this morning to talk about a recent press release regarding drug/drink driving statistics, I thought it pertinent to add a little something to clarify what I was saying (three minutes is not a long time to say what you need to say on an issue as big as this!).
Firstly, the press release relates to a report prepared by ESR using data gathered over a five year period. The data concerned 1046 drivers who died between 2004 and 2009 (89 per cent of dead drivers during that time). These individuals were tested for alcohol and drugs and nearly half (48 per cent or 500 drivers) tested positive. “Of those, 72 per cent or 365 drivers had either used cannabis, alcohol and cannabis, or a combination of drugs”, AA’s general manager for motoring affairs Mike Noon said.
The report showed that:
* 135 (27 per cent) had used alcohol alone;
* 96 (19 per cent) had used cannabis alone;
* 142 (28 per cent) had used both alcohol and cannabis; and
* 127 (25 per cent) had used a combination of drugs, which may have included alcohol and/or cannabis.

I haven’t seen the report but I would be interested to know what “tested positive” means. At what level is an individual deemed to have been “positive” for alcohol, i.e. did it include any level of alcohol or only levels in excess of the legal limit? Similarly with the drugs results, what counted as a “positive”? For the cannabis-positive individuals, was it the active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), that counted as a positive or did it include people who had the inactive metabolites present? The difference being that THC is only present in the body for one to three hours after use of the drug whereas the inactive metabolites can be present for days or even weeks after the person was ‘stoned’. Incorrect interpretation of analytical results can be misleading to those who don’t realise there is a difference. How about the 25% who “had used a combination of drugs, which may have included alcohol and/or cannabis.” What does that mean?

Secondly, saliva testing at the roadside – does New Zealand need it and should the Police be provided with these tests? The tests being used in Queensland currently only detect cannabis, methamphetamine (auch as speed, P) and MDMA (in Ecstasy). So saliva tests are not the silver bullet in roadside testing at the moment. Blood still needs to be collected to detect the presence of other drugs such as benzodiazepnies and other common drugs of abuse such as the opiates, methadone and cocaine. There is information ‘out there’ about how to fake or con a saliva test – you can’t fake a blood sample or hair sample.

Thirdly, impairment tests, which are not a “pass” or “fail” – they are a subjective interpretation made by a police officer based on a set of criteria with which they have been provided and trained to dispense and observe. The new law that came into place at the end of last year saw the introduction of impairment testing at the roadside, a move which is at least ten years behind some other developed countries, but better late than never. This is a tool that the Police can now use to determine if someone is impaired, particularly if a breath screening test is negative. Individuals are required to undergo an impairment test if the Police Officer “has good cause to suspect the consumption of a drug” (Land Transport Amendment Bill (No. 4), Explanatory Note). Unsatisfactory completion of the impairment test could be the result of a number of issues, not just drugs (tiredness/fatigue, new prescription medication, undiagnosed medical condition, etc. – all of these I have encountered before in drink and drug driving cases). The way to solve the issue is to have a sample of blood from the driver analysed. The results and interpretations will be key in a successful criminal case. The law does allow for the defence of a valid prescription for a controlled drug.

The legislation that introduced impairment testing has a final point in the Explanatory Note that states blood specimens taken for alcohol offences can be analysed for research purposes to enable a better picture of drug-driving in New Zealand to be established. I assume this means that there will be a mass of data available pretty soon – and we can expect a new report on the effectiveness of impairment tests in reducing drug driving.

To reduce or not reduce – that is the blood alcohol question Anna Sandiford Jul 28

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Several posts have got involved in the blood alcohol debate (examples being Blood alcohol, Categories of drunk and Wobbling into the road after a night at the pub….). Should NZ reduce the blood alcohol limit for driving a motor vehicle from 80 mg alc/100 ml blood to 50? The UK still has 80 in blood as the legal limit and we in NZ take a lot of what we do in our justice system from theirs.

One thing that has not so far been mentioned is that the NZ breath alcohol limit for driving a motor vehicle is 400 ug alc/L breath. This is established using a blood:breath ratio in the region of 2100:1. In the UK, this ratio is 2300:1, which means that the legal breath limit is 350 ug/L breath (there are plenty of studies that deal with this issue such as Cobb, P.; Dabbs, M., 1985: Report on the performance of the Lion Intoximeter 3000 and the Camic Breath Analyser evidential breath alcohol measuring instruments during the period 16 April 1984 to 15 October 1984. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.   Jones, A., 1993: Disappearance rate of ethanol from the blood of human subjects: implications in forensic toxicology. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 38, 104-118, as well as various Home Office data.    The online version of Clarke’s Analysis of Drugs and Poisons will also be receiving an update from one of the world’s leading minds in this area but that will be next year so I can’t say too much more about it).

50 ug alc/L breath might not sound a lot but in a country like NZ that has a severe attitude problem when it comes to drink driving, it could make a difference.

Wobbling into the road after a night at the pub…. Anna Sandiford Jul 26

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Once again, alcohol-related stories are all over the media (Drunk driver haunted by night of shame; Joyce to review drink-driving loophole; ‘Humiliated’ barrister to plead guilty to drink-driving; Car death: ‘Any other kid, you’d be in jail’).  All of these cases, and most of the alcohol-related cases that are reported in the media, contain stories about people who were drunk and were driving motor vehicles – a catastrophic state of affairs at the best of times.

However, thought should also occasionally be given to those cases where the drivers are not over the alcohol driving limit but where people still die because they’re drunk.  I have worked on many road traffic cases where drunk pedestrians strayed into the path of an oncoming vehicle, were hit and killed or seriously injured.  The trauma of the event will never leave the sober driver but in many of these cases the ‘victim’ was too drunk to know what literally hit them.

Recent research in Forensic Science International Supplement Series demonstrates what we have all known for some time – that pedestrians belong to the group of road users with the highest mortality rate.  Basically, drunk pedestrians are classed as amongst those road users most at risk.  Work completed by Slovenian scientists shows that alcohol-positive pedestrians who died in road traffic incidents between 1999 and 2006 (n = 125) were predominantly younger men, who had a higher level of risk of a road accident, greater incidence of injuries and a shorter period of survival following a road accident – 92% of them died in the six hours after a road traffic incident, usually of head trauma [source: Prijon & Ermenc, 2009. Influence of alcohol intoxication of pedestrians on injuries in fatal road accidents. Forensic Science International Supplement Series, 1, pp. 33–34].

In one case I clearly remember, the pedestrian was a woman who was so drunk she ended up in the road in front of an oncoming motor vehicle.  My job in that case was to calculate her blood alcohol concentration at the time of the incident.  The unfortunate driver had been charged with death by careless driving but he said the pedestrian had just fallen into the road in front of him.  His lawyer was sensible enough to ask an alcohol expert (me) how drunk the pedestrian had been at the time of the incident: considerably, was the answer.  Enough to have significantly impaired her ability to co-ordinate her limbs (see Categories of “drunk”) – she probably literally stepped into the road in front of the car.

It just goes to show that even if people are responsible enough not to drive themselves home, they’re still a potential hazard.  And then there are the non-traffic incidents where people are so drunk they fall into or off things – but that’s a different story.

Taser fuss Anna Sandiford Jul 19

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NZ Police have recently issued a press release to assure the population that there is nothing wrong with the tasers they are using and that a few unsuccessful discharges are to be expected. In fact, the taser trial involved a 12.5% failure rate (2/16) compared with a 13.3% failure rate in the field (4/30) – comparable figures although perhaps the trial was not the largest n ever seen.

The NZ Police press release was in response to media articles about the inefficiency of tasers including the recent case where a police dog was fatally shot and two police officers were shot and wounded (Taser unsuccessfully discharged).

However, I don’t recall seeing any news items about a case where the use of a taser saved the life of the man the Police were attempting to detain (perhaps I’m wrong and it was headline news but I don’t remember seeing it). On 18 June this year, Waikato Police attended Te Kuiti’s main street just after midnight where ambulance staff had been trying to treat a man who was bleeding heavily and who was also known by the Police to have a history of mental illness. The injured man was subdued by Police with a taser and he was then transported in an ambulance to hospital. It wasn’t until after the subdued man was in the ambulance that everyone realised he had sustained a cut to his artery. Apparently, if the man had not been subdued and therefore treated relatively quickly, he would have bled to death.

Now that’s the sort of story that I think should be reported on the 6 o’clock news – let’s have something positive as well as the usual negative.

SciCon 2010 – well worth it…. Anna Sandiford Jul 06

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I have just returned on a bumpy flight from Nelson following my stint at SciCon 2010, the the biennial conference of the New Zealand Association of Science Educators (NZASE). The theme of SciCon 2010 is ‘Journey to Discovery’ and there are plenty of interesting speakers and workshops (it runs until this Wednesday, 7 July).

Having never attended a scientific educators conference before, I had no idea what to expect and being the opening speaker at a conference means you have no way to gauge what the audience is expecting or what they like to hear.

Knowing that forensic science is taught in many intermediate schools these days, my keynote speech was about the CSI effect and how the spark of interest that has been developed in children around the world, including New Zealand, offers educators an unmissable opportunity to attract students into science.  It also gave me the opportunity to put to rest some of those myths that programs like CSI have created.

For example, it is not possible to determine year and location of manufacture of a shoe using a sole pattern deposited at a crime scene. Even if it were, we wouldn’t be able to do it in New Zealand because there is no national footwear sole pattern database, even though the States has had one since the 1930s and the UK has had one for over 20 years and probably considerably longer (I understand it’s a cost-related issue – a reasonable excuse, do you think?).

It was also a surprise to some that the information gathered by CSIs can equally be used to exclude someone from an investigation as it can to prove their guilt – the science tells a story based on fact. Investigations should be geared by what the information is saying, not focussing the information towards the suspect.

It’s important to remember as well that there are thousands of students the world over wanting to become forensic scientists but it’s highly competitive and there are less jobs than there were. Cuts in casework and evidence submission to laboratories is being driven by cuts in police budgets (that includes NZ); lab budgets are being reduced in an effort to reduce costs. Sometime, somewhere along the line, the justice system is going to fail someone. I just hope that mistakes or lack of analysis get picked up before it’s too late.

I also ran a workshop on Alcohol and Adolescents and how the knowledge I have as a professional Expert Witness specialising in alcohol cases can be used by educators to help adolescents deal with issues around alcohol consumption. It was extremely eye-opening for all concerned, including me, and I think we all learnt from it.  I hope some new collaborations will come of it all.

I found the whole experience very rewarding. Science education has come a long way since I was at school and there is now a whole range of exciting experiments that can be used to demonstrate key aspects of science inexpensively but very effectively.  I hope the people who heard me speak got something from my presentations – the feedback was certainly plentiful and all positive. Which is good, because I was shockingly bad at the pub quiz  – sorry….

SciCon 2010 – well worth it Anna Sandiford Jul 05

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I have just returned on a bumpy flight from Nelson following my stint at SciCon 2010, the the biennial conference of the New Zealand Association of Science Educators (NZASE). The theme of SciCon 2010 is ‘Journey to Discovery’ and there are plenty of interesting speakers and workshops (it runs until this Wednesday, 7 July).

Having never attended a scientific educators conference before, I had no idea what to expect and being the opening speaker at a conference means you have no way to gauge what the audience is expecting or what they like to hear.

Knowing that forensic science is taught in many intermediate schools these days, my keynote speech was about the CSI effect and how the spark of interest that has been developed in children around the world, including New Zealand, offers educators an unmissable opportunity to attract students into science.  It also gave me the opportunity to put to rest some of those myths that programs like CSI have created.

For example, it is not possible to determine year and location of manufacture of a shoe using a sole pattern deposited at a crime scene. Even if it were, we wouldn’t be able to do it in New Zealand because there is no national footwear sole pattern database, even though the States has had one since the 1930s and the UK has had one for over 20 years and probably considerably longer (I understand it’s a cost-related issue – a reasonable excuse, do you think?).

It was also a surprise to some that the information gathered by CSIs can equally be used to exclude someone from an investigation as it can to prove their guilt – the science tells a story based on fact. Investigations should be geared by what the information is saying, not focussing the information towards the suspect.

It’s important to remember as well that there are thousands of students the world over wanting to become forensic scientists but it’s highly competitive and there are less jobs than there were. Cuts in casework and evidence submission to laboratories is being driven by cuts in police budgets (that includes NZ); lab budgets are being reduced in an effort to reduce costs. Sometime, somewhere along the line, the justice system is going to fail someone. I just hope that mistakes or lack of analysis get picked up before it’s too late.

I also ran a workshop on Alcohol and Adolescents and how the knowledge I have as a professional Expert Witness specialising in alcohol cases can be used by educators to help adolescents deal with issues around alcohol consumption. It was extremely eye-opening for all concerned, including me, and I think we all learnt from it.  I hope some new collaborations will come of it all.

I found the whole experience very rewarding. Science education has come a long way since I was at school and there is now a whole range of exciting experiments that can be used to demonstrate key aspects of science inexpensively but very effectively.  I hope the people who heard me speak got something from my presentations – the feedback was certainly plentiful and all positive. Which is good, because I was shockingly bad at the pub quiz  – sorry….

Who planted the bomb? Ask Fido ‘technology’ Anna Sandiford Jun 16

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Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are what we might call home-made bombs.  In this age of terrorism, IEDS are more of a risk to a wider range of countries than used to be the case.  Given that terrorism is affecting more westernised countries than before, the perceived need to deal with and catch the perpetrators seems to have taken on a greater importance that it did back in the days when it was really only the UK and countries that people hadn’t really heard of that were affected.

Anyway, politics aside, “technology” is coming to the rescue again.  A recent paper in Forensic Science International by Curran et al describes how canine teams (dogs) have been able to sniff out the scents of people who had contact with bombs after the bombs had gone off (I have not provided a link to the paper because it is behind a login – full citations details below).

When bombs detonate, they are usually pretty destructive, because of course that is what they’re designed to do.  Bomb scene examination is a skilled area in itself and clearly a huge amount of information can be gathered from what looks to most of us like scenes of utter carnage and chaos.

Tavistock Square bus bombing, July 2005

This recent article reports that specially trained dogs (with assistance from their handlers) can identify individuals who have been in contact with IEDs using post-blast debris.  These people can then be tracked in the same way that we see dogs tracking people on various reality cop shows.

Basically, parts of the exploded devices can be recovered from a scene and dogs can identify the person who had contact with the bomb before it blew up – potentially linking a person(s) with the planting of a device.  Although this may sound like old news, it is only recent work that has shown that “human scent survives the intense mechanical and thermal effects associated with an explosion where a concentrated peroxide-based explosive has been employed and can be attained from post-blast items collected from the blast site.”

Apart from the obvious human safety and criminal justice aspects of this research, what caught my attention was the last line of the abstract: “Human scent specific canines have shown the ability to identify individuals who have been in contact with IEDs using post-blast debris with an average success from site response of 82.2% verifying that this technology has great potential in criminal, investigative, and military applications.”

The key word here for me is “technology”.  Having no emotional attachment is a definite bonus in forensic science but although I assume they are referring to the dogs as well as the scent method collection, even I think that dogs are more than just technology….

Ralphy, cadaver-dog-in-training

Curran A., Prada P. & Furton K. 2010. Canine human scent identifications with post-blast debris collected from improvised explosive devices. Forensic Science International, 199 (1-3), pp103-108

Pollen from snot (not for reading at dinnertime…) Anna Sandiford Jun 11

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A big hand to TechNZ because their funding allowed Auckland-based Dr Anna Sandiford of Forensic Science & Research Ltd and Dr Mark Horrocks of Microfossil Research Ltd to work on a joint research project with some world-class forensic scientists and pathologists at Manlove Forensics in the UK.  The project was to develop a new method of collecting pollen samples from dead bodies.

The new sampling method is now taught by Dr Sandiford to UK crime scene examiners, crime scene managers, police officers and forensic pathologists either as part of structured environmental forensics training courses, on an as-needs basis to specific police forces and/or whilst crime scene examiners are actually at crime scenes (that’s how easy the sample collection is).  It’s hoped that the more police forces use it, the more other forces will want to use it, including New Zealand and Australia.  Because of Dr Sandiford’s and Dr Horrocks’ European and Australasian botanical/pollen knowledge, the cadaver samples can be sent to New Zealand for processing, interpretation and eventual presentation in Court regardless of the originating jurisdiction.

Part of the abstract for Dr Sandiford’s upcoming presentation at the Australia and New Zealand Forensic Science Society 20th international symposium states:

“Pollen has wide application in case work: to provide links between things, places and people; to provide information on circumstances through reconstruction of events; as an investigative approach to suggest provenances of samples of unknown origin.  The value of collecting samples from nasal passages for pollen analysis has been recognized for some time and has been useful in several cases.  However, the current method of sample collection is highly invasive. It also requires significant amounts of equipment to be taken to the mortuary and for the pollen specialist or an associate to set it up and supervise or be involved with sample collection.

To speed up sample collection we have developed a very simple new technique.  Samples can be collected by pathologists or even crime scene examiners (with a small amount of training).  This cuts time and cost and should increase the number of cases in which such samples are collected.  The technique also takes into account other trace material that is routinely collected at post mortems or crime scenes.”

The current method of sampling requires removal of the brain during the postmortem.  The method is time-consuming (an hour or so, not including the delay to allow the pollen expert to attend the crime scene and/or post mortem), labour intensive (requiring at least two people) and expensive.  The new method is far, far quicker (in the order of minutes) and cheaper and samples can now be taken at crime scenes, post mortems – anywhere where a dead body is found.

The new sampling kits are being used by UK police forces and demonstration kits have been circulated to pathologists for their use.  Once a few more sampling kits have been returned then the results will be published in the international scientific press.  Initial results are that the new method is not only quick, cheap and easy to use, the results are comparable with the original method.

It’s a fact of life that even for the most serious of crimes, monetary cost comes into play when deciding how to advance an investigation.  Any advancement that means money can be saved without compromising the scientific results surely has to be a good thing and Dr Sandiford is proud to be developing a method that does just that.

Cunning radiocarbon and dating volcanic eruptions Anna Sandiford May 19

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It is excellent to see a new AMS radiocarbon dating set-up in New Zealand (NZ scientists fire up $3.4 million mass spectrometer).  When I was working on climate reconstruction I was hugely reliant on the previous 14C volcanic ash (light) peat (dark)(radiocarbon) device to help put Before Present (BP) ages on volcanic ash layers (tephra) that occurred in sections and cores for my PhD and post-doc – we did this by collecting peat samples that were in direct contact with the tephra layers and submitting the peat samples for analysis.
The numerous volcanic eruptions in New Zealand over the past one million years, and particularly over the last 50,000 years within the Auckland Volcanic Field, mean that by using AMS dates (in conjunction with other radioactive dating methods) we have been able to date accurately each volcanic eruption. Because there are so many eruptions and each is chemically different (generally speaking), we can age-correlate sites over wide geographical areas.

By also reconstructing climate using methods such as pollen analysis and particle analysis (to reconstruct vegetation and environmental conditions), we have been able to reconstruct climate change over, for example, the last 1.1 million years for many areas in New Zealand, particularly the North Island. We have also been able to say how volcanic activity affected the local vegetation in the time immediately after the eruption.  That clearly has implications for future planning and mitigation procedures for future eruptions.

The palaeoclimate records that have been established in New Zealand are world-class, partly because of our volcanic history but also in large part to the presence of a radiocarbon dating facility actually being in New Zealand – long may it last.

[Example literature: Sandiford et al, 2003. A 28,000-7,600 cal yr BP pollen record of vegetation and climate change from Pukaki Crater, northern New Zealand. Palaegeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 201, pp. 235-247]

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