Chemical Forums
Chemistry Forums for Students => Analytical Chemistry Forum => Topic started by: incognito on April 18, 2010, 05:17:17 PM
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Hello,
I was wondering if anyone knew of any public or private laboratories (in CA) for hire that test for methamphetamine or other drugs from indoor air samples? Thanks in advance for answering my question.
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There are no labs that test for drugs of abuse in air, all such labs test for the drugs of abuse metabolites in either urine, hair, blood or saliva. Why not test for such compounds in air? There are two main reasons why they do not: 1) the drug test is for "Metabolites" of the drugs that are produced by Liver enzymes--after the drugs are metabolized by your body. The ''air" does not produce any such drug metabolites; and 2) there is not a financial interest (or more appropriately there is no political pressure) for testing for drugs of abuse in air. After all, you cannot fire the "air" for testing positive for drugs of abuse. In fact, I believe that it is not possible to test positive for cannabis or meth if you inhale the 2nd hand smoke from such items.
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drug sniffing dogs for hire?
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You'd be hardpressed to terminate or convict someone based on just a dog smell track. Our analytical methods are basing the drug detection on the metabolite--the by-product of Liver enzymes action on the parent drug molecule. And, I must say that they are extremely accurate, precise, and have VERY low LOQ's (approaching the parts per billion range). Sorry, but data from dog trailings is not admissible in civil or federal court.
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You could always as the police to do a dog sniffing tour and the courts have ruled that if the dog indicates drugs are present you can due a search under probable cause.
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Nice try Billgates, but amphetamine and methamphetamine cannot be differentiated by dog's olfaction--amphetamine is legal no? So, no p.c.. Nice try tho!
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Bill not gatez
no matter how much i wish otherwise
the situation might be different in TX
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Hello,
I was wondering if anyone knew of any public or private laboratories (in CA) for hire that test for methamphetamine or other drugs from indoor air samples? Thanks in advance for answering my question.
It's not done because methamphetamine is not a naturally volatile material. If it was dispersed in air it would rapidly come out of the atmosphere via a number of routes (diffusion, sedimentation and impaction). Rather than sampling the air in a location for methamphetamine, you would be better off collecting surface swab samples from the area of interest.
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Thanks everyone for your responses. Its definitely been enlightening.
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Slightly OT but maybe interesting, there have been studies here in Italy to measure the (ab)use of cocaine analyzing samples collected from the river Po, don’t know if tehre have been similar studies in other countries
http://www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/14 (http://www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/14)