Archive for the ‘test’ Category
A closer look at the hair strand drug test
The hair strand drug test method is quickly gaining ground to compliment urine testing as a means of detecting substance abuse among employees and in law enforcement. Although each hair strand drug test tends to cost more than a blood or urine test, the added price doesn’t come without accompanying benefits.
A urine test will detect most illegal substances between one and five days after ingestion, hair sampling though can give a picture of substance consumption of up to a year depending on how long someone’s hair is. Even a sample just 1.5 inches in length will provide a 90 day history.
This kind of drug testing has such a long detection window because unlike blood or urine, the metabolites - the waste trace elements created after a substance has been processed by the human body – aren’t passed out of the body, like urine, or replaced by it, like blood. Just 50-70 strands of hair can provide a reliable insight into even low-level drug use over an extended amount of time. It can even be carried out on body hair samples, though the different amounts of ‘live’ and ‘resting’ hair affects the window of detection.
Hair drug testing can detect a range of illicit substances, both recreational and performance enhancing. Due to the extra cost, the World Anti-Doping Agency – the organisation which regulates drug detection in competitive sports – has been slow to embrace it. Still many of its affiliates (the individual leagues and athletic clubs) make use of the technique when investigating cases of sports doping; the test can catch abuse that takes place during training and outside competition, rather than simply a week before a urine test.
The biggest use of hair follicle testing though is in employment screening and in the courts. It’s been extremely widespread in the US for years and its seeing increasing use by employers in sensitive positions. In 2007 police forces began using it to screen their recruits but it’s also proved useful for security firms looking to detect steroid abuse and airlines looking to root out alcoholism among their pilots.
Solicitors and social workers also use hair strand drug testing to settle some of the most sensitive disputes of the legal system. The findings of a hair follicle drug test will stand up in court as definitive evidence of drug abuse. Because of this, it’s often used in parental custody battles or in deciding the eligibility of guardians in the cases of vulnerable children. In many cases, this is to the benefit of those suspected of drug abuse; people who have turned their life around after losing their children over drug abuse can have their word substantiated by hard evidence.