Simple Information on Hair Sample Testing
Drug tests and in particular hair drug testing is becoming far more commonplace, especially across western Europe and North America. This approach to drug testing has a partcular advantage over other detection methods such as saliva, urine and blood, in that it provides a far greater timeframe for which drugs can be detected. (This is commonly known as the detection window). It is possible to detect drugs for several months – even years if the hair has been allowed to grow for that long. Most commonly however, tests require 90 day detection: This compares to just 4-5 days for urine based testing (or in severe cases of cannabis misuse, 28 days)
Approximately 50 strands of hair are needed for successful hair test results. This equates to the thickness of the end of a shoelace, meaning that the majority of would show no obvious signs that any hair had been removed unless their hair is particularly short.
The cost of hair testing is greater than urine based tests – which are the only other viable method of achieving laboratory standard results. Testing using blood is not widely available partly due to the challenges in taking a sample in the first instance.
A typical hair test costs in the region of £60-£70 for preparation of the sample (which involves turning the hair from a solid to a liquid) and then a further £40-50 per drug type required for detection. This compares to an approximate cost of £60-75 for laboratory testing of urine which will pick up substances of misuse across all drug classes.
The biggest question asked of course is how to pass a hair drug test. Very simply, there is only one sure-fire way in which to do this – Don’t take drugs!
This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 5:20 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.