Urine| Hair Follicle | Oral Fluid | Blood | ETG
Hair testing is increasingly recognized as a powerful means for identifying drug and alcohol consumption. Hair offers a lengthy historical record of substance intake by retaining biomarkers within its fibers. When taken close to the scalp, hair can offer a detection window of up to about 3 months for alcohol and other substances. Hair collection is straightforward, somewhat challenging to tamper with, and simple to transport.
A 1.5-inch sample comprised of roughly 200 hair strands (similar in size to a #2 pencil) near the scalp yields 100mg of hair, making it the preferred sample size for screening and confirmation. For EtG, additional testing, and/or analyses exceeding 10 panels, 150mg of hair is advised. We suggest using a jeweler’s scale to measure the sample weight. If scalp hair is not accessible, an equivalent quantity of body hair may be obtained. When mentioning head hair, we exclusively mean scalp hair. Body hair includes all other hair types (facial, axillary, etc.).
Process Overview
The laboratory processing of a drug test result involves four key steps: Accessioning, Screening, Extraction, and Confirmation.
Accessioning pertains to the initial handling of a sample within a laboratory’s system. This step includes ensuring the sample was properly sealed and dispatched, assigning a random LAN (Laboratory Accessioning Number), and completing any supplementary data input not available through an electronic chain of custody mechanism.
Screening entails an initial rapid assessment for drug abuse. While Screening is an economical method to exclude drug use in most samples, a positive result requires confirmation to be legally valid. Any samples with a presumptive positive in Screening require a follow-up confirmation.
If the Screening stage reveals a presumptive positive, additional hair is extracted from the original sample for the Extraction process. During this process, drugs are extracted from hair at a lower concentration compared to other methods (e.g., urine or oral fluid), contributing to the challenges of hair drug screening.
Confirmation of any positive screening outcomes is executed using GC/MS, GC/MS/MS, or LC/MS/MS. All samples with a presumptive positive are cleansed prior to confirmation if required. The entire processing chain from Accessioning to Confirmation is scrutinized under both the CAP (College of American Pathologists) Hair designation and ISO / IEC 17025 accreditation standards.
Advantages of hair drug testing:
Limitations:
Note: Although sometimes termed "hair follicle tests", the analysis is conducted on the hair strand and not the hair follicle beneath the scalp.
Reasons Hair Testing Outperforms Urine Testing in Poynette, WI
Long-Term Detection Advantage in Poynette, WI
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