Drug Testing
Drug Detection Service & Equipment -  Employment screening
Marin County, San Francisco North Bay, Ca. USA

Hair testing is quite accurate and can go back normally 3 months (6 months or longer possible with specialty tests), showing any drugs of abuse used in the detection window. As hair grows out, any drugs used are encased in the hair shaft, so the longer the hair, the longer back in the individual's drug history the lab can detect. Accredited hair drug testing labs, however, only use hair within about 2.5–4 cm of the scalp, and discard the rest. With head hair each 0.5 inch (0.8 cm) corresponds to about 30 days. This limits the detection history to about 90 days, depending upon the rate of growth of the individual's hair. Some people attempt to circumvent this through shaving their heads. In the absence of the required amount of hair on the scalp, body hair can be used as an acceptable substitute. It is also possible to use body hair to do hair drug testing, but since body hair grows slower, the head hair window of detection measures will not apply to body hair.

Additionally, for pre-employment hair testing, the inability to obtain a sample may be grounds for not hiring the individual. Hair Testing labs are regulated by CLIA or SAMHSA (not FDA). There is a growing trend in major companies and law enforcement agencies to utilize hair analysis on account of its efficiency and reputation as the gold standard when considering test accuracy. This technology makes use of radioimmunoassay technology with subsequent confirmation by mass spectrometry.

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