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Pollen Can Tie Suspects To Crime Scenes
Caroline Lowe | wcco.com | Jun 3, 2006

(WCCO) Scientists say criminals are often covered with incriminating evidence that they cannot see. Now federal investigators are using pollen to try to track and catch criminals and terrorists.

It is one of a number of new forensic techniques being explored in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Inside a lab of Texas A&M University, Dr. Vaughn Bryant looks at pollen for microscopic clues that could help solve a crime. Bryant has pioneered the use of pollen as a forensic tool.

"One of the advantages that we have is that the bad guys, the crooks, don't realize that their clothing and their hands and things that they come in contact with are picking up these little microscopic pollen grains which they don't even see," Bryant said.

More than a half-million species of plants produce a unique type and shape of microscopic pollen that can be traced. Bryant, a botanist who teaches anthropology, runs the forensic palynology lab at Texas A&M.

"All of this pollen that people are breathing in is also landing on our clothes, landing on the ground. So the pollen right here at Texas A&M is going to produce a pollen print, as we call it, kind of like a DNA print, which is going to be really fairly unique to this one area," he said.

As hay fever suffers know, some plants produce millions of particles of pollen disbursed by the wind. Plants pollinated by insects produce small amounts that stick to anything or anybody that comes into contact with it.

Bryant says collecting pollen from a crime scene and a suspect can provide evidence as valuable as fingerprints, DNA, or hair and fibers.

"The main thing we are doing is trying to place the suspect or the item at the scene of the crime," he said.

Bryant says the forensic use of pollen could have turned up key evidence in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

"The problem is that had they gotten the clothing that (Simpson) had been wearing, and if they had then done a very careful search for the pollen on there, they could have said for certain whether he had been in those shrubs (at the crime scene) or not," Bryant said. "Now that may have proved his innocence or may have proved his guilt. But nevertheless that was something that was never attempted."

Pollen can be recovered from the dried mud on a suspect's boot, and even from the air filter on a vehicle's engine. Bryant is able to tell if pollen trapped in the filter matches samples taken at a crime scene. He can even tell if a suspect handled marijuana, which produces hundreds of thousands of pollen grains.

"It can become a very good clue to whether or not somebody is dealing with illicit drugs regardless of what they might tell you," Bryant said.

Bryant says the full potential of using pollen to solve crime remains untapped. The forensics of pollen has become a cutting-edge tool in federal terrorism investigations, but state and local crime labs are not equipped to test for it.

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Carl Sagan Goodness Richard Dawkins Goodness

 

Arise -SWS-

Good thing most people kill male plants to avoid pollenating those precious female buds.

Useful technology, yes. Applicable to 90% of marijuana offenses, no.

Buzzby

Cannabis pollen is floating around in the air all the time. If having some on you constituted possession then everyone would be guilty. It's not against the law to have touched a cannabis plant.

This technology might be useful in connecting certain people to certain batches of weed if the DNA analysis is accurate enough, but if the pollen is from a commercially available strain then it would be pretty hard to prove the connection.

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