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#AskUSADA – Why doesn’t USADA use hair samples for testing for substances?
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Hi everyone, here’s another interesting question that we received, “Why don’t you use hair samples to test for substances?” Hair sampling is one additional possible matrix that we could collect from athletes to look for doping substances. There’s a few challenges with hair compared to urine and blood sample collection. One is that hair can be difficult to collect from athletes in a uniform fashion, because our hair differs between individuals. Another reason is that the substances that are detected in hair may not be detectable compared to, or may not be as easily detectable in hair compared to urine and/or blood. Hair can also be manipulated because it’s exposed to our environment through different means, and so hair may not be as reliable to detect the breadth of substances that we’re looking for, as well known matrices such as urine and blood.
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