DRUG TESTS AT WORK CAN BE HAIR-RAISING

Hair testing can reveal drug use, and that is why it's becoming one of the
preferred samples in workplace drug testing.

This is just one of the tidbits of information luncheon guests learned
Monday from guest speaker Bruce Goldberger, co-director of the William R.
Maples Center for Forensic Medicine at the University of Florida.

Goldberger's talk was one in a series of "Leading Edge" luncheon seminars
on a variety of topics sponsored by the UF division of continuing
education, department of conferences and seminars.

"The new rave in the workplace drug testing is testing of hair for drugs
from abuse. Florida is the first state in the nation that has actually
certified this," said Goldberger, a toxicologist and co-editor of "Handbook
of Workplace Drug Testing."

"The drugs stay in the hair as long as the hair is intact. As soon as the
hair disintegrates, then it's gone," he said.

That old saying of guilt by association also comes into play.

"If you're in a room with someone smoking crack cocaine, the crack vapor
will settle in your hair," he said. "Your hair is like a sponge, so even
though you're not actively using the crack cocaine, the vapors will be
detected in your hair."

Goldberger also is a clinical assistant professor and director of
toxicology in the UF department of pathology, immunology and laboratory
medicine in the College of Medicine.

But hair testing is controversial, he said, because dyeing hair or
bleaching it can alter the results.

"We even think that in people who take the same dose of drug and one has
lighter hair and one has darker hair, the person who has the darker hair
actually has more drug in it," Goldberger said. "So there would be a bias
between a white person and a black person or an Asian person."

The toxicologist also is technical and administrative director of the
Forensic Toxicology Laboratory in Gainesville, which supports medical
examiners' offices in nine districts throughout the state.

He and colleague Anthony B. Falsetti, director of UF's C.A. Pound Human
Identification Lab, head the university's new Maples Center for Forensic
Medicine, which was approved by the State University System last October.
It is the first such center in the nation and focuses on forensic medicine
issues, Goldberger said.

The center, which is operated out of the two men's separate locations for
now, works closely with law enforcement in death investigations.

"In my laboratory, we're known mostly for the detection of drugs in
unconventional samples like hair and nails," he said.

Apparently any chemical, drug, that is ingested and gets into the blood has
the potential to be deposited in the hair, whether it is an illegal drug or
therapeutic drug.

"What's unique about our hair is its long-term measure of drug exposure,
because that's a tissue that's there forever until you lose it," he said.
"Our other organs, our liver or our kidney, are being regenerated, so those
cells die and are replaced by new ones. Our blood is constantly being
replaced. We even lose our skin; it falls off. But our nails and our hair
are there for a good long time."

Goldberger's expertise recently was called upon in England where a doctor
was accused of killing nine of his elderly patients. The defense turned to
Goldberger for a review of test results compiled by a German laboratory in
the case.

"He was giving these women morphine overdoses, and they were dying. Nine
bodies were exhumed, hair samples collected from these women and sent to a
German laboratory for analysis. They sent me the data for expert review,"
Goldberger said. "He is in jail now."