Fight Relapse – Use A Hair Drug Test

March 8th, 2010  

There are various kinds of tests that you can do these days to ascertain whether someone has been on drugs or not. While some drug tests use a saliva sample, or a blood sample to test for drug addiction, there are others that use a urine sample for drug abuse testing.

While gathering a sample for drug testing may seem invasive or perhaps tedious, a drug test is a necessary thing to do when you are recruiting people for a specific industry or trying to check if someone has been on drugs before coming to work. It’s also an important tool when you’re helping someone who struggles with drug addiction.

A urine or saliva-based home drug test may also work for a one time check for teens involved in drug addiction, but the one we would most recommend for these purposes is the hair drug test.

A hair drug test (also known as the hair follicle drug test) is something that can help you fight drug addiction by ensuring that you understand the history of the last 90 days with one snip of a hair. In fact, the great thing about a hair drug test is that you can check for more than 6 drugs at the same time. These include marijuana, cocaine, opiates, methamphetamines, ecstasy, PCP and amphetamines.

The blood in the body is known to nourish hair as it grows. If there are drugs in the blood, they will inevitably get into the hair follicles and move outwards as the hair grows. The hair drug test is not a great test to check on whether someone has consumed drugs in the last couple of days. This is mainly because the drug takes some time in getting into the hair and therefore it requires about a week for the results to show.

For accurate results, the hair sample required for the hair drug test should include at least 100 to 150 strands of hair. A sample of hair that is half inch long can give you a hair drug test analysis for about 30 days of drug history. Similarly an inch and a half of hair can tell you the history of drug abuse for 90 days.

The fact that it can tell you a history of drug abuse makes it a great tool for those who have already undergone rehab and are looking at avoiding a relapse. The collection of the hair sample is one of the easiest samples to take. In addition to that, the number of days that can be tested for is also a critical factor that makes it most suited for testing for rehab patients.

A home hair drug test can also be used if you want to make sure that your teens are not lying about whether they had a drug for the first time or not when they are caught. You only need to collect a snip of hair sample (you can choose to cut from different places on the scalp) and place it in a collection foil to send to the laboratory. Then the lab can tell you not only if your teen was using drugs in the past 3 months, but how frequently – if the teen is a daily user, or if the teen uses drugs recreationally. You’ll be able to use this information to create the most helpful and constructive response possible when dealing with your teen’s drug use.

Check out our Hair Drug Test section for more information.  Please note that the PDT-90 test and the Express Hair Follicle 7 Drug, Standard Hair Follicle 7 Drug, and Hair Drug Test for Business do have a few minor differences:  the number of drugs tested for (6 or 7) and whether detailed frequency of use information is available with your results (in the case of the PDT-90, no; in the case of the other 3 tests, yes).

– Anne Hamilton

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Are You Ready for the Olympics?

February 11th, 2010  

It’s hard not to enjoy the Olympics.  There’s always some aspect to get your attention – the variety of people attending, sports you never heard of, flags you’ve never seen, new things to learn.  We have learned something new already today – do you know Ross Rebagliati?

Ross won the first gold medal ever for snowboarding at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan.  After this great accomplishment, the International Olympic Committee rewarded him by stepping in – and taking his medal.  Why?

Because he failed a drug test.

Ross tested positive for marijuana and the medal was taken from him, although not for long.  Interestingly enough, at the time the International Olympic Committee did not have a set policy with regard to marijuana as a banned substance, at least where it concerned snowboarders and skiers and others monitored by the International Ski Foundation.  The medal was given back when it was determined that the International Olympic Committee, for the reason given above, had no right to take the medal.  You can read more details about this at the National Drug Strategy Network’s site.

Imagine losing a gold medal to a drug test!  It’s happened to a lot of people – CBC, the big Canadian news outlet, has an interesting rundown of all the different ways people have cheated in the Olympics.

It’s now all the harder for athletes to pass a drug test with the invention of the hair drug test.  When you can collect a drug history of 90 days on someone, it is hard to keep a secret, and the hair follicle test is also very difficult to cheat.  The hair follicle drug test tests the drugs inside the hair, breaking down the hair once it reaches the lab in order to get to what’s inside that’s hard to reach with shampoos or any other method.

It’s hard to beat your competitors in the Olympics, but it’s also hard to beat a drug test.  Stay clean and remember what an important tool a hair drug test can be for finding out drug use amongst you, your family, and friends.

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Hair Drug Testing – Police Are Subject To It Too

February 1st, 2010  

You may be used to the idea of police conducting drug testing, and alcohol testing as well.  But did you ever think about the fact that police are drug tested too?  As in many other professions, especially those that are safety related (and police work certainly is that), police departments can test their workers.

This news article (ABC News: Police To Be Drug Tested Under New Laws) from ABC News, an Australian outlet, details the initiative to bring drug testing into standard police HR procedures.  It might surprise you that such procedures were not standard operating protocol to begin with.  After all, police have to operate cars at high speed and sometimes negotiate very careful situations.  It seems like a logical fit, but an argument can also be made that the police deserve our trust.

In any case, South Australia is intended to introduce mandatory testing for officers – and testing could be blood, urine, or hair.  I think this says at least two things, one about the hair drug test – it must be pretty accurate if it’s going to be used in such an official capacity!  And it is indeed very accurate.  Secondly, about the South Australian police – if they use hair, you know they care, because that type of testing offers an up to 90 day drug use history.  So that way you know the people on the job are not habitual drug users.  Urine drug testing can tell you if they are high at the moment, which is good, but hair drug testing allows you to find out if your employee is stable enough – can and did they go without drug use for a long period?  Is this person really drug free, or are they just clean for this test?

These are questions you can ask yourself in your own home as well.  There are a number of options when it comes to the hair follicle drug test.  But they all give you the unique power to ask and answer these types of questions.

So what do you think – should police be drug tested?  More or less frequently than other professions?  Or should they be exempt?  Drug testing is as always interesting and thought-provoking.

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Why Can’t Hair Drug Tests Be Cheated? Find Out Here…

January 21st, 2010  

Home Health Testing strives to provide the most information about the tests we sell and what they test for.  On our main site we took a look at why hair drug tests can’t be cheated (you can read the full article at the link).  Basically we want everyone to know that our hair drug tests test what’s inside the hair – what you can’t get to with advertised shampoos and conditioners.  Sometimes the problem with drug tests is not that they aren’t accurate (they are) but that they can be faked.  With urine drug testing, people spike samples (or try to anyway) all the time.  It’s silly, but there you go.  Urine tests are certainly worth it for the range of drugs they can test (up to 12 at one time!), their value (the cheapest of all tests), and their decent detection time (a link to our chart).  Saliva drug testing is also a useful tool, because someone can take the test standing in front of you – it doesn’t have the same privacy issues as a urine-based test.

So don’t be daunted by all the “pass a drug test” sites that are out there!  Check out our article on hair follicle testing and learn more!

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3 Easy Ways to Drug Test at Home for Marijuana

January 4th, 2010  

Marijuana is one of the most easily available drugs these days and a marijuana drug test that can be done at home is one of the best and easiest ways that can be used to confirm the presence of drugs in the system. The home drug test specimen that is used can be saliva, urine or hair, depending on the specific test that you have chosen.

Depending on the type of sample that is chosen for testing, the results of the test can be known within minutes or days. In addition to that, different samples can provide accurate drug testing for a specific period of time. This means that a marijuana drug test should be chosen based on the time period that you suspect for consumption. The detection periods for each of the home drug tests are preset. However, it should be noted that these differ based on weight, drug tolerance levels, metabolic rate, gender, age, urine ph and overall health.

Recent consumption can be detected using a home test that analyzes a urine sample or a saliva sample. Since marijuana takes a longer time to make it though the scalp then it does into saliva or urine, the hair drug test is generally used for detection of drugs in a longer detection period.

The details of each test are given below.

– Hair drug test – This home drug test is the most enduring and can be used to check if any drug has been consumed within a window of 90 days. The test that uses a properly collected sample of hair can test other drugs like cocaine, opiates, PCP and amphetamines along with marijuana. In most cases, there is a specified way in which the specimen has to be collected. This specimen is then required to be sent to the laboratory via first class mail or courier services. To maintain confidentiality the results are almost always available online and sometimes by phone.

– Saliva drug test – This marijuana test is a practically instantaneous way of getting results and can allow you to assess whether someone has been taking marijuana (among other drugs) in a matter of minutes. The accuracy is evaluated and estimated to be around 97% making this a very popular test with parents and educational institutions. The only things required for this are a mouth and a gum swab. This test is used when you want to confirm consumption that has just taken place since marijuana appears in the saliva about an hour after consumption and generally disappears 12 hours after consumption or earlier.

– Urine drug test – Another test that can be used to get results almost immediately, this test does not require you to send any sample to a laboratory. The home test kit can help you test up to twelve drugs at the same time, marijuana among them. Marijuana appears in a urine sample about 2 to 5 hours after consumption and is detectable for up to 15 to 30 days if the person is a heavy smoker. People that use marijuana less frequently will have a shorter detection period and it will not stay in their urine for as long a time.

A home drug test that detects marijuana can be an efficient tool for parents, especially when used judiciously to avoid causing harm to the relationship between parent and child. These easy tests can be the first step in a parent-child conversation about drugs, or the first step toward ending a marijuana habit.  If you have any questions about these tests, be sure to contact us.

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Hair Drug Test Information – Things You Might Not Have Known

November 30th, 2009   2 Comments

Hair drug testing is a growing but still somewhat unfamiliar drug testing process.  People have questions all the time about it, so we decided to create a guide to the most important aspects of this home drug test process.

First of all, you are going to need a pretty specific amount of hair.  At least 90 to 120 strands should be collected for submission, and if the hair is short or fine, collect a bit more.

Secondly, where you collect the hair is important.  You must collect it from the scalp – you cannot just snip the ends off the hair.  Although it takes some time to reach this point, drugs become harder to detect as the hair grows out and grows older.  And it is also important to give the hair drug test laboratory a consistent starting point to work with.  That point is a week before the hair was cut – it takes about a week for hair with or without drugs to grow out long enough to be cut and then analyzed.

The third thing to be aware of with this home drug test is that each half inch of hair that you provide represents about a month.  Ideally, you want to provide an inch and a half of hair – that will give you a 90 day drug history. With a consumer test kit, 90 days is the maximum period of analysis for head hair (we will get into body hair later).  You can submit hair a foot in length but only the inch and a half closest to the scalp will be analyzed.  Do not, however, shorten the hair from the other end for that reason.  Your hair drug test will specifically tell you how to collect the hair.

You may also not have known that the hair sample used in a hair drug test is pulverized by the laboratory.  Once in liquid form, they can get to the metabolites inside.  Any accredited laboratory will use this process to determine if drugs are present in the hair.

Now a question often asked is – can I use hair that I collect from a hairbrush for my test?  The answer is no, for a few reasons.  One, you cannot necessarily be sure that all the hair on the brush is from the same person.  Two, when you submit a hair sample for your hair drug test, all the hair must be organized the same way. All the root ends must be together for your submission to be successfully analyzed.  Finally, you may not know how old the hair is on the hairbrush, and end up mixing hair that is a year old with hair that is from this week.  The integrity of the hair drug test will deteriorate.

The last area of interest I want to address is body hair.  Some tests accept body hair, others do not, so you must check with the manufacturer or store to find out.  If body hair can be analyzed by your home drug test hair kit, then you will be able to learn a longer drug history than you can with hair from the head.  An inch and a half of body hair could take you back as long as 5-6 months, possibly longer.

Hair drug testing offers a lot of promise to parents and employers, as it is one of the only tests that can tell you such a long drug history.  The great thing about the home drug test market is that it provides these tests to you without having to go to a laboratory yourself.  The hair is processed by the same accredited laboratories, so the results are just as accurate with the home drug testing method.  

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