Hair analysis may refer to the chemical analysis of a hair sample, but can also refer to microscopic analysis or comparison. Chemical hair analysis may be considered for retrospective purposes when blood and urine are no longer expected to contain a particular contaminant, typically a year or less. Its most widely accepted use is in the fields of forensic toxicology and, increasingly, environmental toxicology. Several alternative medicine fields also use various hair analyses for environmental toxicology but these uses are controversial, evolving and not standardized.
Hair analysis can refer to the forensic technique of assessing a number of different characteristics of hairs, usually consisting of hairs from "known" sources and those recovered during forensic examinations or "questioned" hairs in order to determine whether they have a common source; for example, comparing hair found at the scene of the crime with hair samples taken from a suspect. Typically, examinations of this type are conducted using stereo-microscope(s) for initial preparation, and a comparison microscope for detailed analysis (comparison).
Read more about Hair Analysis: Use in Forensic Toxicology, Drug Test, Use in Environmental Toxicology, Literature
Famous quotes containing the words hair and/or analysis:
“—These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.”
—Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)
“The spider-mind acquires a faculty of memory, and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis, taking apart and putting together in different relations the meshes of its trap. Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; but he had acute sensibility to the higher forces.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)