Applications
Applications in forensic science
Numerous forensic applications have been described in the literature. In these, hair analysis has been used to document differentiation between a drug dealer and a drug consumer, chronic poisoning, crime under the influence of drugs, child sedation and abuse, suspicious death, child custody, abuse of drugs in jail, body identification, survey of drug addicts, chemical submission, obtaining a driving licence and doping control (Moeller et al. 1993; Sachs 1996). More than 450 articles concerning hair analysis have been published and report applications in forensic toxicology, clinical toxicology, occupational medicine and doping control. The major practical advantage of hair for testing drugs, compared with urine or blood, is its larger detection window, which is weeks to months, depending on the length of hair shaft analysed, against a few days for urine. In practice, detection windows offered by urine and hair testing are complementary: urine analysis provides short-term information on an individual’s drug use, whereas long-term histories are accessible through hair analysis. Although there is reason able agreement that the qualitative results from hair analysis are valid, the interpretation of the results is still under debate because of some unresolved questions, such as the influence of external contamination or cosmetic treatment, and possible genetic differences.
