Today I decided to try something new in a forensic science student lab, taking small videos (Vines), creating a video lab script, see below. The students had seen a lab script before hand, but this is a dry description of the steps they need to complete. I have decided to capture…
Tag: hair
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Fragmentation of cases may mean missing part of the puzzle
Current concern among forensic scientists is the ‘fragmentation’ of cases. What this means is different exhibits from a case are sent to different laboratories and no one forensic scientist maintains an overview of what is happening. Such cases are managed by the Police rather than forensic scientists and the argument…
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Rugby union reveals lack of performance enhancing tests
Today the Rugby Football Union announced the testing statistics for 2012-13 and proudly reported no positives for performance enhancing drugs at an elite level. A good thing surely? What about the positive illicit drug tests? Today the Rugby Football Union (RFU), the governing body of the English game, released…
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Hair drug testing – fit for forensic use?
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…
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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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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…
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Drugs in hair – a brief intro
Much of my research has been on the detection of drugs of abuse in hair samples. My most recent paper in this area focused on children who had been living in drug factories (that’s another story!). This originally appeared on the site www.fortox.org early 2012. Of all the common biological matrices for…