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Updated: Sep 8, 2025

Extraction and Analysis of Cortisol from Human and Monkey Hair
Published on: January 24, 2014
Identifying contamination versus ingestion in hair testing, with cocaine as example
Virginia A Hill1, Michael I Schaffer1, Ryan B Paulsen1
1Psychemedics Corporation, Culver City, California, USA.
Abstract:
When developing a procedure to identify external contamination of hair as opposed to drug that is in hair from ingestion, there are components of the process that must be considered in the final method. A method that does not achieve the objective may be missing one or more of these elements: choice of solvent, a drug-binding agent, ratio of solvent to hair, temperature, time, intactness of the hair, and establishing, for the chosen method, a criterion based on the drug contents of the wash and hair that indicates the hair may be contaminated.
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