PubMed · 8936132
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P G Zimmermann. 1996. Dressing the part.. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0099-1767(96)80003-1
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According to an old rule still in use, gunshot suicides will rarely shoot through the clothing but will pull it aside to bare the skin. Thus, a bullet defect in the clothing would be an indicator for homicide or an accident. A total of 138 clearly defined gunshot suicides were analysed with regard to this topic. The thorax, which is commonly covered by textile, was the target for 27 suicides (19.5%). Of these 27 persons, 25 had fired through the clothing and 2 had placed the muzzle directly on the exposed skin, which represents a relative frequency of only 7%. Special features such as thick clothing or an affected state of mind did not appear to influence this behavior. Consequently, the perforation of textile does not suggest homicide or an accident - it is not applicable as a criterion for distinguishing different modes of death. Only in the rare cases when a gunshot victim is found with intact clothing covering the entrance wound can this finding be interpreted as an indication for suicide.
For efficiently measuring ultraviolet transmission through clothing materials for a large number of samples, an automated measuring system with a broad-band method has been built and calibrated against a spectroradiometer based instrument. The apparatus can be used to test 60 samples in 25 min. A selection of clothing materials of known composition, weave, color and state have been tested, using the broad band method and the automated measuring system together with a solar ultraviolet simulator. Variations of about eleven times for different weave structure, about two times in the ultraviolet transmittance for different colors, and about 20 times for some stretched samples were observed. For wet conditions, an increment in ultraviolet transmittance for cotton and lycra materials and a decrement for polyester and polyester(65%)/cotton(35%) were also observed.