If cause of death is apparent, i.e, a blow to the head and the murder weapon is found by the body, will toxicology screening still be performed? Is toxicology testing automatic on any forensic autopsy? How long does toxicology take if done by hair strand analysis? Is this an accurate way to test for cocaine use?
Question about toxicology
| Author | Comment | ||
|---|---|---|---|
 Alicem68 |
Question about toxicology |
Lead | |
|
Posts: 1 (04/06/08 07:33:27) |
|
||
|
KCShaw |
Tox: hair/cocaine | ||
|
Posts: 2 (06/09/08 06:20:10) |
Tox screening varies a little from office to office and forensic pathologist to forensic pathologist. In the case of a homicide or other "blow to the head" in suspicious or undetermined circumstances, I would generally expect tox to be done. In many places, tox screening will be performed on a large number of the forensic cases -- but not necessarily all.
Turnaround times vary considerably -- as in, from a week to 6~8 months or occasionally more. This is more a problem of backlogged work than actual time to perform a given test or series of tests. I'm not familiar with details of hair analysis; the only text I have at hand indicates cocaine can be found in hair up to around 250 days from last usage -- but also that there isn't quite as much supportive evidence for it as for other methods (thus it isn't generally considered useful for employee screening, where there are likely to be the greatest number of challenges against a positive analysis). |
||
