title: The population of coloured textile fibres in domestic washing machines.
abstract: A population survey was carried out to analyse examples of the coloured fibre population that may be expected to exist in both front- and top-loading domestic washing machines during Spring, in Sydney, Australia. White cotton T-shirts were washed both individually, and with a normal household wash load, then taped to recover extraneous fibres transferred during the wash cycle. Twelve thousand one hundred and seventy-eight fibres were classified according to length, colour and generic class. Cotton fibres were most prevalent (69.4%), followed by man-made fibres (24.2%). The most common colour/generic class combinations were black/grey cotton (27%), blue cotton (20%) and red cotton (15.6%). Other combinations generally represented under 2% of the total fibre population. Two thirds (65.9%) of the recovered fibres were under 2 mm in length, the proportion of fibres decreasing with increasing fibre length. Variations in machine type did not affect the distribution of fibres with respect to fibre type, colour or length.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Forensic Science, University of Technology, Sydney, P.O. Box 123, Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia.
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Watt
authors.forename: Claude
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Roux
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Robertson