Talk:Hair analysis

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I've[edit]

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)[reply]

Quackery[edit]

This discussion is copied to Talk:Hair analysis (alternative medicine), and can continue there. -- Fyslee 10:28, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The quackery category could perhaps be applied to a theoretical hair analysis service article, but since the science supporting the validity of hair analysis in general is pretty much taken for granted, there's no reason to apply it to this article. In fact, the only criticism of hair analysis services is from over 20 years ago. --Lee Hunter 20:10, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, this article only covers the subject very briefly, including the legitimate and illegitimate aspects, and doesn't focus exclusively on the current misuse of hair analysis (so the disputed categories stay off), which hasn't changed much in the last 20 years, except for getting more sofisticated and widespread. It is misused even more now, and in many situations.
Here are a few links with plenty of information:
The above policy is based on the following references:
  1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA). Hair analysis -- not covered. Medicare Coverage Issues Manual §50-24. Baltimore, MD: HCFA; 2000.
  2. Lazar P. Hair analysis: What does it tell us? JAMA. 1974;229:1908-1909.
  3. Hambidge KM. Hair analyses: Worthless for vitamins, limited for minerals. Am J Clin Nutr. 1983;36:943-949.
  4. Klevay LM, Bistrian BR, Fleming CR, Neumann CG. Hair analysis in clinical and experimental medicine. Am J Clin Nutr. 1987;46(2):233-236.
  5. Barrett S. Commercial hair analysis: Science or scam? JAMA. 1985;254:1041-1045.
  6. Filipek PA, Accardo PJ, Ashwal S, et al. Practice parameter: Screening and diagnosis of autism. Report of the Quality Standards Subcommittee of the American Academy of Neurology and the Child Neurology Society. Neurology. 2000;55(4):468-479.
  7. Kruse-Jarres JD. Limited usefulness of essential trace element analyses in hair. Am Clin Lab. 2000;19(5):8-10.
  8. Hu H. Exposure to metals. Prim Care. 2000;27(4):983-996.
  9. Hindmarsh JT. Caveats in hair analysis in chronic arsenic poisoning. Clin Biochem. 2002;35(1):1-11.
  10. Niggemann B, Gruber C. Unproven diagnostic procedures in IgE-mediated allergic diseases. Allergy. 2004;59(8):806-808.
  11. Tsatsakis A, Tutudaki M. Progress in pesticide and POPs hair analysis for the assessment of exposure. Forensic Sci Int. 2004;145(2-3):195-199.
  12. Dolan K, Rouen D, Kimber J. An overview of the use of urine, hair, sweat and saliva to detect drug use. Drug Alcohol Rev. 2004;23(2):213-217.
  13. Passalacqua G, Compalati E, Schiappoli M, Senna G. Complementary and alternative medicine for the treatment and diagnosis of asthma and allergic diseases. Monaldi Arch Chest Dis. 2005;63(1):47-54.
  14. Savvopoulos MA, Pallis E, Tzatzarakis MN, et al. Legal issues of addiction assessment: The experience with hair testing in Greece. J Appl Toxicol. 2005;25(2):143-152.
  15. Gambelunghe C, Rossi R, Ferranti C, et al. Hair analysis by GC/MS/MS to verify abuse of drugs. J Appl Toxicol. 2005;25(3):205-211.
-- Fyslee 20:48, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well you've certainly dumped a lot of information here. None of it, as far as I've waded through it, supports the category of "quackery" with the exception of the ubiquitous Mr. Barrett who runs a business based on describing EVERYTHING as quackery. The AETNA link says they cover it for certain things and not for others (well, duh). Filipek et al doesn't look at hair analysis specifically (aside from one brief comment), Kruse-Jarres says the usefulness is "limited" (a far cry from quackery). Hu says "the major long-term storage site for arsenic is keratin-rich tissues, such as skin, hair, and nails---making the measurement of arsenic in these biological specimens useful for estimating total arsenic burden and long-term exposure under certain circumstances." I'm not going to bother going through the rest as it's obvious you've just dumped a whole pile of crap you haven't read in the hopes that it will look impressive. --Lee Hunter 21:07, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A better reference to start from, including discussions about sampling, processing, analytical methods and some uses HAIR ANALYSIS PANEL DISCUSSION: EXPLORING THE STATE OF THE SCIENCE; June 12—13, 2001. This meeting brought together anti- and labs in a very controlled format *to start* to address issues & reconcile them. Must have been fun.--TheNautilus 01:02, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. That is much better. Especially this page [1] I think the main point is that hair analysis is of some benefit in certain situations and not in others. Calling it quackery is not at all accurate or helpful to the reader. --Lee Hunter 02:08, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also Hair analysis (alternative medicine) looks like a dubious POV fork to me--TheNautilus 09:42, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is standard practice with disambiguation pages. This article is confusing because it contains widely different elements. Now the aspects related to alternative medicine practices are collected in one article and can be examined there. -- Fyslee 10:22, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion is copied to Talk:Hair analysis (alternative medicine), and can continue there. -- Fyslee 10:28, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is an unsatisfactory situation, my replies there[2]--TheNautilus 12:40, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Science[edit]

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)[reply]

Good points. Go for it. -- Fyslee 21:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hair Alcohol Testing[edit]

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.

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)[reply]

Forensic methods that place people during particular time periods[edit]

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)[reply]

Thank you for your suggestion. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). WLU (talk) 15:07, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

Duplicate section[edit]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Hair follicle testing[edit]

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)[reply]

harry potter[edit]

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) How exactly is this relevent?[reply]

Change the first sentence in the intro to 90 days[edit]

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)[reply]

here is another lab

only 90 day detection

https://www.omegalabs.net/hair-testing-service/hair-testing-faqs/other-services.cmsx

73.173.253.83 (talk) 23:06, 9 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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==Wiki Education assignment: Seminars in Forensic Science== This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2022 and 15 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Dvigna (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Kristinapham.

@Dvigna: 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)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Seminars in Forensic Science[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 January 2024 and 30 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Enatti0108 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Lorrriana (talk) 23:10, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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