Urine| Hair Follicle | Oral Fluid | Blood | ETG
Hair analysis is increasingly recognized as an effective method for identifying substance and alcohol use. It offers an extensive timeline of drug use by embedding specific indicators within the hair's fibrous strands as they grow. Collecting hair near the scalp enables a detection timeframe of up to about three months for substances and alcohol. Hair is straightforward to obtain, relatively hard to tamper with, and simple to dispatch.
A specimen length of 1.5 inches with around 200 hair strands (comparable to the thickness of a standard pencil) near the scalp yields about 100mg of hair, serving as the optimal quantity for initial screening and validation. For EtG, additional analyses, and/or tests exceeding 10 panels, a 150mg sample is advised. We suggest measuring the sample using a jeweler’s scale. If scalp hair is not available, a matching quantity of body hair can be utilized. The term "head hair" refers solely to scalp hair. The term "body hair" pertains to all hair excluding that on the scalp (such as facial or underarm hair).
Process Overview
The lab processing of a drug test result incorporates four essential steps: Accessioning, Screening, Extraction, and Confirmation.
Accessioning focuses on the initial integration of the sample into the lab’s system. This stage ensures the sample’s proper sealing and shipping, randomizes the Laboratory Accessioning Number (LAN), and finalizes any additional data entry omitted from an electronic custody chain.
Screening acts as a preliminary, rapid assessment for substance misuse. While cost-efficient for excluding drug use in most cases, conclusive courtroom evidence requires a positive screen to undergo further validation. Samples with suspected positive results during Screening necessitate supplementary verification.
When a sample is suspected positive during Screening, more hair is extracted from the original sample and processed for Extraction. In this phase, substances are isolated from hair at much lower levels compared to other testing methods (e.g., urine or saliva), which is why hair drug testing poses the greatest complexity.
Confirmation of any presumed positive result relies on GC/MS, GC/MS/MS, or LC/MS/MS technologies. Samples believed positive are cleansed before verification as deemed necessary. The complete laboratory process, from Accessioning to Confirmation, is evaluated according to the both the CAP's Hair criteria (College of American Pathologists) and ISO / IEC 17025 accreditation standards.
Advantages of hair drug testing:
Limitations:
Note: While commonly called "hair follicle tests," the analysis itself examines the hair shaft and not the follicle beneath the scalp.
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