Indanedione-Zinc formulations

[Mike Fletcher]

G'day from the Sunshine State, Brisbane, Oz

I am a 5th and final year fingerprint trainee expert at the Brisbane fingerprint bureau and would like some help with some questions on indanedione. Our office is about to finally reach out and formulate procedures for the use of IND so we should be able to use it the next 6 months or so. Yes it takes a long time to reach us here !

Anyway, we are going to use the following recipe for 500ml of stock solution :

5.0g of indanedione
150ml of dichloromethane
300 ml of ethyl acetate
50 ml of acetic acid
5ml of zinc chloride

Then for zinc chloride stock solution 200ml :
8.0g of zinc chloride
200ml of absolute ethanol

Then for the working solutions : IND-Zn 0.5 litres :

50ml of IND-Zn stock solution
[b]450ml of HFE7100 carrier solvent.[/b]

My question is : Is anyone aware of any other carrier solvents that have been used instead of the HFE7100 and whether there has been any published articles, journals etc written about thes findings ?

Any help in the right direction here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Mike.

[Shaheen]

Dear Mike,

Try the following Australian study:

Roux, C. et. al. Evaluation of 1,2-indanedione and 5,8-dimethoxy-1,2-indanedione for the detection of latent fingerprints on porous surfaces. JFS 45(4) 761-769.

And the following studies from overseas:

Merrick, S. et. al. An operational trial of ozone-friendly DFO and 1,2-indanedione formulations for latent fingerprint detection. JFI 52(5) 595-605

I have several other references. Send me an email if you are interested and I will forward my Endnotes.

Alternatively, your colleague Adrian will be coming down to the IFRG meeting and Christie Wallace-Kunkel and Chris Lennard would be a great person to talk to about that.

I hope this helps,

Kind regards,
Shaheen

[Shaheen]

Dear Mike,

Try the following Australian study:

Roux, C. et. al. Evaluation of 1,2-indanedione and 5,8-dimethoxy-1,2-indanedione for the detection of latent fingerprints on porous surfaces. JFS 45(4) 761-769.

And the following studies from overseas:

Merrick, S. et. al. An operational trial of ozone-friendly DFO and 1,2-indanedione formulations for latent fingerprint detection. JFI 52(5) 595-605

I have several other references. Send me an email if you are interested and I will forward my Endnotes.

Alternatively, your colleague Adrian will be coming down to the IFRG meeting and Christie Wallace-Kunkel and Chris Lennard would be a great person to talk to about that.

I hope this helps,

Kind regards,
Shaheen

[Christie]

Mike
I have done a whole thesis on the topic and have numerous references
You can email me at Christie.S.Wallace@uts.edu.au

I also assume you have read the article in the Journal of Forensic Identification Vol 57 (1) pg 4-18, 2007.
Robert Ramotowski has done some recent research which suggests increasing the zinc in the formulation by 4x gives even better results.

Petroleum ether i have found works almost as well as HFE but HFE is better from an OH & S point of view. The US secret service use Pet ether

Email me if you need any more help

[Norm Sneddon]

Mike,

Be aware that the dichloromethane that you list as one of your solvents is a carcinogen. It is listed in Wikipedia as being one of the more benign solvents in that group, but still a carcinogem.

HFE-7100 seems to work very well and is safe for both the user and the environment.

I'm with Forensic Identification, Ontario Provincial Police here in Canada. I am taking a look at Indanedione to see if it works well in our climate/humidity and noticed your posting while gathering information about Indane.

Norm Sneddon

[Christie]

I have heard of the concerns of the RCMP regarding the dichloromethane content in the INDZn formula

Having a close look at it - it is interesting to note that many home cleaning agents and degreasers have a DCM content higher than that in the INDZN formula and the only warning these products carry is a "Caution to be used" or "protective covering for the hands"

Some food for thought