Hair testing – is it a method that can be used in the court room or should it be consigned to research laboratories until it is a flawless technique? Following my blog last week on testing for sports and social drugs, I got pointed towards a link in the comments, an article describing criticism of the…
Tag: analysis
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Hair testing for sport and social drugs
Following the tragic death of the cricketer Tom Maynard there has been a recommendation that hair testing should be carried out on sportsmen and women to enable the detection of drug use. Is this feasible and what are the benefits? A young man on a night out takes…
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Methamphetamine lab children – exposed to drug fumes
In New Zealand there is a big methamphetamine problem. In the years from 2000 to 2009 the number of clandestine laboratories found and raided by Police increased from 9 to 135. In a third of these cases there are either children present when raided or who live at that…
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The Lance File
This site is about scientific evidence – so what’s the evidence versus Lance Armstrong then? ‘ Isn’t it all a witch hunt?’ ‘Where’s the smoking gun?’ ‘It’s all hearsay’… I hadn’t intended to talk doping this week but these are the comments I have had this week from students, colleagues and friends. So I…
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Caffeine in hair
Last year I had an undergraduate student investigate the analysis of caffeine in hair samples. The aim was to determine if there was a correlation between the amount of caffeine in the hair sample and the amount of caffeine drunk by the individual. The student produced a very good…