Services
Toxicology
LGC provides the full spectrum of
forensic toxicology services. These are available as discrete
standard packages or bespoke parts of more complex investigations
often involving other aspects of LGC's extensive forensic
expertise.
Standard services include fast,
cost-effective, high quality analyses of body fluids and tissues
for commonly abused drugs and alcohol in relation to occupational
and social welfare testing and traffic offences.
Other services are tailor made to meet the
needs of individual cases such as drug facilitated sexual assault,
suspected poisonings and sudden or unexplained deaths. These
involve the analysis of a wide range of body fluid and tissue
samples for what are often minute traces of drugs and poisons, and
sub-therapeutic levels of medicines, and interpretation of the
results in the specific case circumstances.
Our toxicology services are considerably
enhanced by our close working relationship with the largest group
of forensic pathologists in the UK. These include forensic
pathology services, our unique in-house histopathology laboratory,
and our extended expertise in unusual associated areas of expertise
such as forensic archaeology, anthropology and entomology.
An example of the benefits of this powerful
combination of expertise was our groundbreaking work in the case of
Chantelle Taylor. Chantelle had been addicted to heroin and,
although her body was never found, we were able to demonstrate the
presence of heroin metabolites in insect remains at the premises
where she is thought to have died. This was instrumental in
establishing that she had been murdered by her lodger.