Title : Influence of atmospheric humidity on the results of determining the age of handwritten inscriptions on questioned documents
Abstract:
Forensic technical examination of documents is in demand to combat the falsification of a document by participants in judicial disputes. Determining the actual date when a certain inscription appeared on a piece of paper is one of the most important and difficult forensic tasks. Written compositions are complex multicomponent mixtures, including dyes, solvents and resins, preservatives, and antioxidants i.e. complex organic mixtures that undergo changes over time. This is due to numerous technical and legal problems that require description, systematization, and solution.
Room temperature is believed to be a major factor in aging. However, a much stronger factor of natural influence, in the authors’ opinion, should be the atmospheric humidity. In some cases, the amount of 2-phenoxyethanol begins to increase over time according to chromatography-mass spectrometry. This can be explained by the influence of humidity
