Introduction: This virtual special issue stems from 36 presentations given at the Fourth Chemical Forensics Symposium held 3 - 4 April 2017 as part of the 253rd American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting & Exposition in San Francisco, CA, USA. Since 2011, the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry has hosted symposia that review developments and topics arising in chemical forensics. Chemical forensics is a developing scientific discipline that aims to attribute a chemical (or mixture) of interest to its source by the analysis of the chemical itself or associated material constituents to address investigative, legal or intelligence questions. “Source” refers to how, where and when a chemical was handled or produced.
Given past and recent attacks with chemical warfare agents (CWAs) and other toxic chemicals there is a strong need for research and development in chemical forensics for the purpose of finding those responsible for chemical attacks. Hence, many of the papers in this issue deal with the source attribution of toxic chemicals that can be used as weapons. However, given the needs, principles and methods that are shared across different application areas of material provenance or authentication, papers that deal with the source attribution of other illicitly used chemicals and materials are included.
Revised: May 20, 2019 |
Published: August 15, 2018