The 18th congress of the Society of Hair Testing

(SoHT) in Geneva
Why hair analysis?
Hair is a unique matrix because no active metabolism or excre-
tion are present to remove xenobiotics once deposited such that
their analytical detection window is extended to several months
or even years. Moreover, hair sampling is non-invasive, almost
impossible to manipulate, and easy to transport, thus making hair
the matrix of choice for retrospective analysis in various elds.
These include workplace drug testing, trafc medicine as in driv-
ing licence re-granting programs, child custody, drug facilitated
crime (DFC), doping control, and biomonitoring. Furthermore,
segmentation permits the comparison of drug and/or alcohol
use/abuse in different time periods. The challenging tasks of
single-hair analysis (including its segmentational analysis) and
of the detection of a single xenobiotic exposure have already
been published.
The SoHT
The SoHT was founded in December 1995 in Strasbourg, France,
following an oriental dream on the sands of Abu Dhabi during the
1995 International Association of Forensic Toxicologists (TIAFT)
workshop. Since then, the international scientic SoHT has regu-
larly held its annual meeting and occasionally organized workshops
in order to actively promote hair testing. For a number of years, the
Society has been organizing prociency testing programs for drugs
of abuse and alcohol biomarkers in hair. It has also produced and/or
inspired a number of statements, consensus reports, and guidelines
which support the daily interpretation of hair testing results in
many laboratories worldwide. To date, the Society has 233 active
members, 27 of whom joined last year.
Back to Geneva
Following the rst meeting in Geneva in 1996, the Society
returned to Geneva for its 18th Meeting on 2830 August 2013.
The meeting included 4 plenary lectures, 32 oral presentations,
and 21 posters. Students and established experts from 21 different
countries attended the meeting where a poster prize and a
platform prize were awarded. The meeting focused on four areas
of hair testing:
1. Expertise, interpretation, and bias
2. Hair as marker of consumption and exposition
3. Quality assurance in hair analysis
4. New analytical trends in hair analysis
Other topics, such as nails as an alternative hair matrix, Bolivian
prehistoric hallucinogen consumption, hair analysis in DFC, ef-
fects of cosmetic treatment and micropulverized extraction on
drug and ethyl glucuronide (EtG) analysis in hair and washing
methods for identifying damaged hair samples discussed in a
separate Free Topics session. The alcohol biomarker EtG in hair
was discussed in almost all the four sessions, in nine oral presen-
tations and four posters. The dinner party on Mont Salve and a
visit to the Apero Circus Knie rounded up the conference.
2014 in Bordeaux, 2015 in Brazil
Thanks to the authors who have submitted a manuscript and to
the several reviewers who spent their free time to improve the
quality of these papers, it is possible to present the readers of
Drug Testing and Analysis with this Special Issue which hopefully
gives you a taste of the excellent SoHT meeting in Geneva last
summer. While wishing you good reading, in the name of the
SoHT, I would like to take this occasion to invite you and your
colleagues to join us for our 19th conference in Bordeaux, France
1013 June 2014 and for the long-term planners among you, to
the 20th conference, 36 May 2015 in So Paulo, Brazil.
Guest Editor
Ronald Agius
Labor Krone, Siemensstr. 40, 32105, Bad Salzuen, Germany.
E-mail: ragius@laborkrone.de
Drug Test. Analysis 2014, 6, 1 Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Editorial
Drug Testing
and Analysis
Received: 25 February 2014 Revised: 26 February 2014 Accepted: 27 February 2014 Published online in Wiley Online Library
(www.drugtestinganalysis.com) DOI 10.1002/dta.1651
1