Primarily, forensic toxicology referred as “postmortem chemistry”. Forensic toxicology is an element of science of pharmacology. It deals with the quantities and effect of various drugs and poisons on human beings.
It actually concern with the quantity of drug and poison that causes death. In most cases of forensic toxicology, more than half cases occurred due to drinking alcohol and driving.
Every state and federal government has a law to prohibit drinking. They also examined the intensity of alcohol present in a body. The forensic toxicologist examined the level or the amount of drug present at time of death beside the usage history of drug.
It is multi-discipline field involve the presence, revealing and analysis of drugs and other toxic compound in body tissues and fluid. These analyses were justifiable in court.
The most recent advancement in forensic toxicology is the reemployment of drug screening in which is to identify the probable hazards of drug use by a person cause any bad effect on health.
Forensic toxicology is further divided into different types. One of them is screening of Drugs and to confirm them. It plays an important role in crime investigation related to screening, quantifying and confirmation of drugs. Another one is volatility testing and its confirmation.
This type helps to indicate the level of volatile compounds like alcohol in the body fluid essential for both forensics and law enforcement. Third category of forensic toxicology is to determine the toxicity of samples related to criminal and non criminal investigations.
There are of three unique category of forensic toxicology (post mortem forensic toxicology, person recital forensic toxicology and forensic urine medicine analysis).
Post-mortem forensic toxicology is used to analyze the occurrence or the nonexistence of drug and their metabolites and chemical such as ethanol (CH3CH2OH), carbon monoxide (CO), metals and other harmful chemicals to evaluate the role in the mode of fatality.
Person –performance forensic toxicology this test examined the incidence of chemicals, compounds in the blood or other sample of body and evaluates the individual act or performance.
Forensic urine drug testing this test determine presence, absence the harmful compounds, metabolites here urine to identify the earlier make use of or misuse.
National Institute of justice seeks to fund research, for the improvement of tools and technologies related to drugs screening and for the analysis of biological samples to find the presences of drugs and other substances in blood.
For finding the efficient and faster techniques for finding toxicity of samples. For detection of newly detect toxins. For improving the distribution of drugs throughout the body and for understanding the dependence of concentration of drug and its side effects on body.
Forensic toxicology laboratories are well designed so that functions and work of laboratories done with full of correctness, carefully and proficiently. As they are well design the space will divided into sections to reveal functions.
The size of laboratory is well dependent on number cases, employees and systematic responsibilities in laboratory. All the analytical function of the laboratories are not done at single space and done with certain equipment. The space allotted for analytical investigation depends upon the type of procedure required.
Forensic toxicology is used in solving may cases of crime. A case involving the death of 44 years old woman died as a result of attempting the unclog a kitchen sink drain. The whole case was solved with the help of forensic toxicology.
Autopsy revealed a dusky gray green discoloration to the gray matter of the cerebral hemispheres which was indicative of hydrogen sulfide exposure. Toxicology drug screening revealed the concentration of toxins in blood. Cause of death was also revealed which was due to the presences of toxins.