Date of Submission

12-10-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Forensic Science

Advisor

Claire Glynn Ph.D.

Keywords

Urea Pretreatment, Bloodstain Detection, Luminol, Bluestar, 8M Urea, Chemical Enhancement Methods

MeSH

Urea, Luminescence, Luminol

LCSH

Urea, Bloodstains, Chemiluminescence

Abstract

Throughout the years, many chemical enhancement methods for bloodstain detection have been developed. One of these chemicals is luminol. Blood detection using luminol and its derivatives, like Bluestar™, have been commonly used at many crime scenes. The pre-treatment of 8M urea on bloodstains was proposed in order to increase the intensity of chemiluminescence of the reaction, and to eliminate false positive reactions that can occur. This study takes a look at bloodstains that are placed on two types of surfaces, at varying dilutions, and analyzed after different amounts of time. These bloodstains were analyzed to see how strong of a reaction is obtained after the addition of both 8M urea and the blood detection reagent Bluestar™ to the bloodstain. The addition of Bluestar™ created a chemiluminescent reaction that can be measured both visually and digitally in terms of its strength. It was determined that bloodstains at higher dilution factors, and bloodstains on non-absorbent surfaces like tile, are more likely to have a stronger and more easily detectable chemiluminescent reaction after the addition of urea. Although some improvements were seen from this study, most of the samples tested did not show any significant trend in increasing the strength of their chemiluminescent reaction. This emphasized the necessity to further explore the feasibility of the method and increase its efficiency through improved methods and testing.

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