HAIR TESTS COSTLIER, BUT MORE ACCURATE

Drug Test Focuses on Scalp

Hair Analysis Favored for Long Time Horizon

The type of hair-follicle analysis that Bridgeport Mayor John M.
Fabrizi underwent this month is cutting into urine testing's turf as
employers' favored way to screen workers for drug use.

Hair testing is more costly than urine testing, but advocates say it's
more reliable, less invasive and reveals abuse over a much longer time
horizon.

"We are actually having some preliminary discussions about making the
switch from urine testing to hair-strand testing," said Noreen
McNicholas, spokeswoman for St. Vincent's Medical Center in
Bridgeport. "There's definitely interest in it."

Fabrizi underwent the testing earlier this month after the Connecticut
Post took him up on an offer to undergo a random drug test, following
Fabrizi's admission of cocaine use while in office. He initially took,
and passed, a urine test in July. The Post then asked Fabrizi to
submit to a hair-follicle test, which he also passed.

Urine testing remains standard for employee drug screening. It's
cheap, quick and has more than 20 years of military research behind
it, making it the test of choice for the federal government.

At a typical cost of $50, urinalysis can show if someone is on drugs
or has used them within the past four or five days. Experts say urine
tests are useful for random drug screening, a common practice in
professions where safety is a concern.

But for an ever-expanding list of employers, from Fortune 500
companies to casinos to school systems and metropolitan police
departments, hair-follicle testing is the standard for weeding drug
users out of their work force.

A few strands can tell an employer whether a person has used cocaine,
PCP, heroin or marijuana for months in the past.

Chemical traces of drugs remain in the hair long after they pass from
the rest of the body. A half-inch strand can reveal drug use within a
month; a 1-inch strand can provide a three-month picture.

And if employees are bald or wear their hair shaved to the skin, body
hair can be used.

Hair follicle analysis costs significantly more than urine testing --
typically $100 to $150 per test.

But toxicology experts, laboratories and federal government
contractors say the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration has proposed new rules, in the final state of revision,
that are likely to make hair the prime specimen for drug testing.

"Hair testing is a highly, highly reliable way of testing for the
presence of drugs when properly performed by a lab. It's quite
precise. And it offers a wider window for detecting drug use than
urine testing," said Dr. Bruce Goldberger, professor and director of
toxicology at the University of Florida College of Medicine at
Gainesville.

He said the new rules will increase employers' confidence in
hair-follicle analysis, and will likely prod the federal government to
rely on hair for its drug-screening requirements.

"[The rules] set the stage for ensuring that all laboratories handle
hair specimens the same way," Goldberger said, even down to the
procedures the lab must use to meet federal standards.

Goldberger is president-elect of the Academy of Forensic Sciences,
editor-in-chief of the Journal of Analytical Toxicology and a former
consultant to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"With these new guidelines being promulgated," he said, "there will
definitely be some movement that may take years, but a significant
portion of federal testing will rely on hair."

It takes only 40 strands of hair, about an inch long, snipped from the
back of the head to supply enough hair for testing, said Raymond
Kubacki, president of Psychemedics Corp. in Boston. Psychemedics is
the only lab in the country to win U.S. Food and Drug Administration
approval for all its hair testing.

"It's not invasive at all," Kubacki said, "and it's impossible to
defeat, like a urine test.

"Anyone who goes on the Internet or who's been using drugs knows how
to do that."

That's what the General Accounting Office learned in 2005 when it
conducted an undercover investigation of products and strategies for
defeating urine drug tests. Trawling the Internet and visiting
businesses in and around Washington, D.C., GAO investigators found
more than 400 widely available products for masking the presence of
cocaine and marijuana. Some came with double-your-money-back
guarantees if they didn't defeat the urine tests.

The products call into question the effectiveness of current
drug-testing procedures, Robert Cramer, managing director of the GAO's
Special Investigations unit, told a congressional subcommittee.

"The sheer number of these products and the ease with which they are
marketed and distributed through the Internet present formidable
obstacles to the integrity of the drug-testing process," he said.

Against the backdrop of such testing undermining products,
Psychemedics focuses exclusively on conducting workplace testing for
drugs using hair samples.

Its client list includes the Federal Reserve Bank, 250 school systems
in 28 states, a number of Fortune 500 companies and dozens of major
metropolitan police departments.

"Our testing in schools has proven to be a real deterrent to kids who
may have thought about doing drugs," Kubacki said. "It's dissuaded a
lot of them."

Hair testing is controversial, however.

Employees have challenged findings, claiming specimens were improperly
handled, the tests were contaminated or the lab staff improperly
interpreted the results. Some have claimed the tests picked up
"second-hand" drugs that got in their hair when they were near others
smoking an illegal drug.

But Kubacki said the testing procedure eliminates drug residue from
the environment. "We put the hair through a rinse for four hours
before it's tested," he said.

Ronald Ing, vice president at Gregory & Howe Inc., in Shelton, which
manages urine drug testing programs for Connecticut businesses, said
hair strand analysis might discriminate against long-haired employees.

A sample from someone with long hair may reveal past drug abuse that
is no longer a problem. "If I was using drugs four months ago, it does
not mean that I am a drug addict," he said.