Forensic toxicology concerns the application of toxicology to situations that may
have medicolegal review, and as a consequence, results must stand up to scrutiny in
a court of law.
1
There are primarily three subdisciplines of forensic toxicology:
- 1Postmortem toxicology, more recently referred to as death investigation toxicology.
- 2Behavioral or human performance toxicology, which concerns
- aImpaired driving as a result of alcohol and/or drugs consumption.
- bDrug-facilitated sexual assault cases.
- cDoping control. Screening of athletes for performance-enhancing substances is monitored by the World Anti-Doping Agency.2In this category must be included equine and canine toxicology testing, because entire laboratories are dedicated to this specific purpose.
- a
- 3Forensic workplace drug testing or drug urinalysis, which is performed as a preemployment and/or random monitoring of employees for illicit drugs or court-ordered testing of convicted drug offenders.
KEY POINTS
- •Forensic Toxicology is composed of Postmortem Toxicology, Human Performance Toxicology and Drug Urinalysis.
- •Forensic Toxicology results have the potential of being scrutinized in court; as a result, testing is more comprehensive, with greater emphasis on specificity and accuracy in identifying potential toxicants.
- •Conclusions about postmortem results must be made after considering all aspects of a case, including medical records, matrices analyzed, drug interactions, drug tolerance, postmortem interval, and the like.
Keywords
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Publication history
Published online: July 23, 2012
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Published by Elsevier Inc.
