Talk:Hair analysis

message: I've heard tha hair analysis test for toxicologly purposes may be accurate for up to ten years, that is, it will expose any 'doses' from ten years prior to the testing.  Is there any truth to that????
:It will certainly depend on what's being tested for.  Even if it were universally true, it's hard to come by ten-year-old hair.  If your hair is as short as most Western men keep theirs, then the hair on your head was probably all grown within the last three to six months.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:48, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: I've

message: This article would do well to add Sampling, Processing, Analytical methods sections, starting with an extract of the ATSDR paper, updated of course. 
This minor point, Finally there is the problem that hair will be up to two weeks old meaning that the data obtained may not reflect the current state of the person the hair was taken from, moved here, might belong in Sampling, prefer shorter with other richer content.--TheNautilus 08:50, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good points. Go for it. -- Fyslee 21:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Science

message: I'm new to Wikipedia, so I didn't want to edit the article but I'm not sure that the points made in the hair alcohol testing section are wholly true:
A few of the laboratories in the UK that i'm aware of do not section hair for a month by month analysis due to the potential for such markers to be leeched out of the hair over time. Examples of this are:
*See the 4th question down:
Can I recognise a pattern of abuse? No, because we do not section the hair month by month and carry out periodic analysis. Our research has shown this is unsound scientific practice because the markers can migrate along the hair shaft.
http://www.surescreen.com/picture.php?prodid=HAAK
*See the 4th paragraph down:
Unlike testing hair samples for drug misuse, it is not yet possible to rule out the effects of normal hygiene practices such as shampooing when analysing alcohol consumption over a period of many months.
http://www.tricho-tech.co.uk/pages/dalcohol.htm
**READ THE DISCUSSION SECTION:
As in previous investigations, concentrations of FAEE were also found in hair of teetotallers (Auwärter et al., 2001Go).
http://alcalc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/39/1/33
I think that it is also not true to note that the more of a biomarker is present, the more alcohol you have consumed. This surely varies depending on the unique metabolism of the individual - i.e some people's bodies break down the alcohol better than others.
The diagram seems to suggest that the concentration of alcohol in the various biological samples is measured and plotted against time. This contrasts with the text above it which suggests that biological markers are detected (and not alcohol). Due to the differing ways in which people metabolise alcohol it is impossible to quantify how much of a substance they have consumed from simply detecting biological markers, and thus the graph is flawed.
***SEE THIS INFORMATION FROM http://www.surescreen.com/list.php?cat=3#HAAK***
Can you determine how much alcohol a person has had monthly? No. Although we will give a value in our report, we can only say that the value exceeds our interpretation of the cut off level we have set, which is 60 grams of alcohol per day over a protracted period. We cannot interpret how much alcohol was actually consumed. To do so would be scientifically unsound because alcohol is metabolised in slightly different ways by different people.
All of this information might also influence the text on hair alcohol testing which is on the Drug Testing page.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Djae (talk • contribs) 14:10, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hair Alcohol Testing 

message: This article says quite a lot about drug intake and heavy metal poisoning, but not really anything about the very interesting applications of hair analysis I was hoping to read about. See for example this news report, which gives detailed information based on forensic analyis of hair such as "the owner visited an area between Valencia and Almeria in eastern Spain and the Marseille to Perpignan area of southern France for up to six days, some eleven weeks before the hair was cut." It's fascinating that such detailed information can be obtained. Similarly, Wikipedia's article on Ötzi the Iceman, which is what led me here, states that analysis of his hair was used to investigate his diet in the months before his death, and also indicated that he'd been involved in copper smelting. It would be really great if someone could expand this article to discuss this kind of thing. The Ötzi article also places him near a specific Italian village  in his youth on the basis of isotopes in his tooth enamel. Anyone know anything about this kind of forensic analysis? 79.68.202.189 (talk) 12:10, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Errr... right, please spare me the patronising boilerplate text. If you read my message you'll see that I don't know anything about hair analysis, I just read a news article that gave surprisingly detailed information based on it, and came here to see if I could learn about how it was done and what else was possible. I'm not in any position to add to the article, nor do I have the time or inclination to track down the relevant sources and become knowledgeable enough for that situation to change. I'm here to read the encyclopaedia, not to write it, and was suggesting to those who wrote this article and hopefully know about the topic that it could benefit from some expansion. Please think about how you come across to readers making suggestions. 79.68.202.189 (talk) 07:02, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Forensic methods that place people during particular time periods

message: I removed the section on alcohol hair testing. It was a duplicate of Drug test#Hair testing though that has now been edited. I am not happy with duplicate text in different articles while the quality of the text is also in need of modification. I think a section on drug testing using haoir is appropriate though and will add one very soon. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 18:37, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I have now created a drug test section that is reasonably original if somewhat short. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 18:51, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Duplicate section

message: I am trying to find out how long a hair 5 panel takes.  I received the results in two hours and it indicated positive for cocaine.  I had another hair follicle test done two days later (by a different company) and it came back negative.  I have never touched cocaine and am wondering how the "positive" test result came about.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.147.72.15 (talk) 20:18, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hair follicle testing 

message: harry potter was written by j.k rowling and has seven books in the series she is one of the most famous authers on the planet and her bookes have been written in many different languges across the world.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.26.242.33 (talk) 14:56, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  harry potter 

message: Hair can't be tested for drugs beyond 90 days. Please show me a lab that can give you definitive results from a hair sample for over 90 days. 
This is complete nonsense and impossible. The first sentence or second should be changed to a couple months not i.e. 1 year. 
http://www.questdiagnostics.com/home/companies/employer/drug-screening/products-services/hair-testing/hair-testing-faqs
73.173.253.83 (talk) 23:02, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the input!  It's nice that you have sources on that.  The "one year" thing comes from the CDC (i.e. the US government): http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/hair_analysis/5.3.html , BUT it's from an old source (from 2001?!).  Is it possible hair analysis has gotten worse in the last 14 years?!  Or maybe the source was always crazy.  Anyway, seems reasonable to change it.  SnowFire (talk) 00:04, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change the first sentence in the intro to 90 days 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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replies: text: Can you revise your addition a bit? First off, there's a typo in the reference (handbood).  But more generally...  this is an encyclopedia article for a general audience, rather than a guide for forensic investigators themselves.  You write that "The use of ALS in order to visualize hair can be useful in photographs taken during criminal investigations."  Okay, how is it useful?  Why do we care?  Does different wavelength light enable some sort of identification that can't be done otherwise?  What, if so?  The paragraph is very disconnected as it stands.  SnowFire (talk) 21:31, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: — Assignment last updated by Lorrriana (talk) 23:10, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Seminars in Forensic Science