What is a Hair Drug Test?
Hair Follicle Drug Test
A hair follicle drug test is a type of laboratory test that indicates if a person has been taking drugs. With this test, a sample of hair is taken and processed in a laboratory to find out if the person has been taking drugs. You may have other questions about hair drug tests. This procedure is relatively new, and many people are not familiar with how a hair follicle drug test works. It’s really quite simple. The technician takes about 50 to 80 strands of hair from the person. This is one reason why many companies like to perform hair drug tests. First, it’s very non-invasive. There’s no need to use needles to take blood. It’s also not messy, like fecal or urine drug tests. It’s also easy to verify the sample and very hard to switch the samples. The person taking the sample can verify that the hair was taken from the subject directly and that it was not switched with a clean sample.
Of course, there is one downside. These types of drug tests are generally more expensive, sometimes costing up to 100 dollars PER test. When a company is testing hundreds or even thousands of people, then this is not a good solution. A blood test or even a urine test would be much more cost effective. That’s why some people only reserve hair drug tests for people who are at high risk or probability of being a drug user. It also is one of the types of tests that cannot detect cocaine use.