Identifying background microbiomes in an evidence recovery laboratory: A preliminary study

•Surfaces of an Evidence Recovery Laboratory were sampled for microbiomes.•Phyla found in these samples were consistent with human skin microbiomes.•Unweighted Unifrac distances revealed clustering of participant and ERL samples.•Microbiome was found on most, human nDNA on few, surfaces sampled in ERL.•Limitations of using microbial profiling in a forensic context were identified.