To sample traces from smooth surfaces, a piece of material can
be soaked in a solvent and rubbed over the surface being examined.
This procedure, called swabbing, is the method of choice for skin,
work surfaces, floors and smooth fabrics such as leather or plastic.
For porous surfaces such as clothes, the vacuum sampling might be
more effective than swabbing. Several papers were published in
the past about swabbing explosive traces [16–21], but in the
opinion of the authors, the surface-sampling by swabbing of TATP
traces was a field deserving more research. The present paper
reports an evaluation of the applicability of different swabbing
systems for trace detection of TATP using GC/MS. Two of the
swabbing systems evaluated here were already studied for organic
gunshot residue [22] and for other explosives [23].