Is hair testing for alcohol an imprecise science?
Hair testing is not an imprecise science and is subjected to the same rigors and decisions that apply to other branches of testing such as blood alcohol levels in drivers, for example. In many areas of medicine and science most testing is done to establish a level and then that level is compared with the best available ‘threshold’ at the time. For example, drunk driving evaluations are carried out against an accepted ‘cut off level’ which in the UK is 35 micrograms of alcohol in breath, 80 milligrams per 100 ml in blood, or 108 milligrams in urine, even though these figures to not correlate to each other in any one individual at any one time. In the future the cut off level may reduce to 50 milligrams per 100 ml of blood. Each country has their own standard, in Scandinavia for example, the driving limit is only 20 mg per 100 ml of blood.
