Urine| Hair Follicle | Oral Fluid | Blood | ETG
Hair testing is recognized as an effective means for identifying drug and alcohol consumption. Hair can capture a long-term record of alcohol and drug biomarkers within the hair strand's fibers. When sampled near the scalp, hair can offer a detection timeframe of up to about three months for alcohol and drugs. Hair collection is straightforward, challenging to tamper with, and easy to transport.
A 1.5-inch section of roughly 200 hair strands (comparable to the thickness of a #2 pencil) nearest the scalp provides 100mg of hair, which is ideal for both screening and confirmation. For EtG, additional tests, and/or panels exceeding 10, a 150mg sample is advised. It's suggested to weigh the sample using a jeweler's scale. If scalp hair isn't available, a similar quantity of body hair can be used. When referring to head hair, it specifically means scalp hair. Body hair denotes all other hair types (facial, axillary, etc.).
Process Overview
The drug test results process in the lab consists of Accessioning, Screening, Extraction, and Confirmation.
Accessioning involves the initial incorporation of a sample into the lab system. This includes ensuring the sample was correctly sealed and shipped, assigning a random LAN (Laboratory Accessioning Number), and completing any extra data entry not handled by an electronic chain of custody system.
Screening is a preliminary assessment for drugs of abuse. While Screening offers a cost-efficient way to dismiss drug use in the majority of samples, a positive screen is essential for admissibility in legal proceedings. Any samples that are presumptively positive in Screening must undergo secondary confirmation.
If identified as presumptively positive during the Screening phase, extra hair is extracted from the initial sample for the Extraction phase. Here, drugs are isolated from hair at a much lower concentration than other methods (e.g., urine or oral fluid), which accounts for hair drug screening being the most challenging methodology to perform.
Confirmation of any positive screening result is executed via GC/MS, GC/MS/MS, or LC/MS/MS. All samples marked as presumptive positives are washed before confirmation as required. The lab process from Accessioning to Confirmation is evaluated under both the CAP (College of American Pathologists) Hair designation and accreditation to ISO / IEC 17025 standards.
Advantages of hair drug testing:
Limitations:
Note: Although often called "hair follicle tests," the analysis is performed on the hair strand rather than the follicle beneath the scalp.
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