Urine| Hair Follicle | Oral Fluid | Blood | ETG
Hair testing has emerged as a robust tool for identifying drug and alcohol usage. Hair holds a historical record of alcohol and other substances by trapping biomarkers within the strands as they grow. When gathered near the scalp, hair can offer a detection period of up to roughly three months for alcohol and drug use. Hair collection is straightforward, relatively tamper-proof, and convenient for shipping.
A 1.5-inch section consisting of about 200 hair strands (roughly the circumference of a #2 pencil) nearest to the scalp will yield 100mg of hair, which is the optimal quantity for testing and confirmation. For EtG, add-ons, and/or tests exceeding 10 panels, a 150mg specimen is advisable. It is suggested to weigh the specimen using a jeweler's scale. If scalp hair cannot be obtained, a comparable quantity of body hair may be used. When mentioning head hair, we specifically mean scalp hair. Body hair encompasses all other hair types (facial, axillary, etc.).
Process Overview
The four core steps involved in processing a drug test result in the laboratory are Accessioning, Screening, Extraction, and Confirmation.
Accessioning entails the initial processing of a sample into a lab’s system. This process involves checking that the sample was securely sealed and shipped, assigning a unique LAN (Laboratory Accessioning Number), and completing any supplementary data entry not covered by an electronic chain of custody system.
Screening consists of a rapid preliminary assessment for drugs of abuse. While it is an economical approach to eliminate drug usage in most samples, a positive result requires confirmation to be valid in legal settings. All samples that preliminarily test positive during Screening require a secondary confirmation.
If a sample tests presumptively positive during the Screening stage, additional hair is extracted from the original specimen for the Extraction process. Here, drugs are extracted from hair at a concentration significantly lower than in other methodologies (such as urine or oral fluid), which makes hair drug screening the most challenging methodology to conduct.
Confirmation of any positive screening result is executed using GC/MS, GC/MS/MS, or LC/MS/MS. Presumptive positive samples undergo washing before confirmation if necessary. The complete laboratory process from Accessioning to Confirmation is audited under both the CAP (College of American Pathologists) Hair designation and the standards for accreditation to ISO / IEC 17025.
Advantages of hair drug testing:
Limitations:
Note: Despite being often referred to as "hair follicle tests," the analysis is performed on the hair strand itself, not the follicle beneath the scalp.
Why Hair Follicle Testing Beats Urine Testing in Dyer Brook, ME
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Tamper-Resistant Testing Method in Dyer Brook, ME
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