A study in relation to the random distribution of four fibre types on clothing (incorporating a review of previous target fibre studies).

A new target fibre study was undertaken building upon eight previous published studies, which are reviewed here. Fifty-eight items of outer clothing, obtained from households across England, were taped and searched for three types of commonly occurring fibres and one less common fibre type. The tapes were examined using a combination of automatic and manual searching. Any fibres similar to the target fibres were removed and examined using microspectrophotometry, comparison microscopy, thin layer chromatography (TLC) and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) where applicable. One polyester fibre, four acrylic fibres and eleven wool fibres were found that matched the three commonly occurring target fibre samples. None of the less common polyester fibres were found. One item had six matching wool fibres and another had the polyester fibre and an acrylic fibre recovered from it. The remaining eight fibres were each recovered from individual items. The results suggest that finding a large number of fibres that match a control is unlikely to happen by chance, which supports the findings of the previous target fibre studies.