Chemcare Explain What Your Test Results Actually Mean

Chemcare provide specialist cleanup and decontamination for New Zealand homes and businesses, including methamphetamine or hazardous substance decontamination, ensuring your home or rental is absolutely safe again. In response to growing public demand, more and more companies are offering meth testing services and, on the face of it, one meth test is much like another. But this is far from being the case. Working through the different types of testing that are available, what they do, how they differ and the relative merits of each, is essential if you are to get the service you need.

As Chemchare explain, the sensitivities of meth test kits can vary wildly. Where one might show no meth present, another can identify significant levels of meth. You must be clear on the capabilities of the testing service you use, before you commit to buying that service. As a rule of thumb, laboratory based testing will always be more sensitive than an infield/self- testing kit!

Obvious as it may seem, the more areas you get sampled the more likely you are to find meth. So, if you want to increase the likelihood of identifying potential problems, you will test as many surfaces as you can. This has great significance for somebody getting a meth test done. Meth residues in a house accumulate in the area or areas where meth related behaviour takes place. If you don’t test the area where the meth is, then you don’t find any meth. If you only sample three or four areas in a property meth residues can be missed.

When you get your results, what do they mean? The result will depend on the kits and testing methodology used to take the samples. Pre purchased DIY Meth test kits might have a tolerance of +/- 1µg/100cm, so when you’re looking for results over 0.5µg/100cm and you have no contamination present but your test is positive or your property has a level of 1µg/100cm but your test is negative you can see why people are getting confused.

Indicative testing, or more inaccurately referred to as “Composite” testing, can use one swab or wipe on up to eight areas to give you one result. So one area is swabbed using a 10x10cm template in one location and what does the tester know?

So, at the end of eight locations tested with a single swab could only one of the areas be contaminated? Well, using this method nobody will ever know. But we now have a result and it has come back over the threshold of 0.5µg/100cm. So what does this really mean?

So what’s a “Lab Composite”? This is where a separate swab, a separate 10x10CM template and a change of gloves are used for each location or surface reducing the chance of cross contamination. However, you only get one result. There is then the same issue as the previous test where the assumption is each room or surface has an equal level of contamination.

Detailed single swabs of separate rooms and materials are the most reliable forms of tests available, and will provide a picture of what is really happening, not just indicating.  

Chemcare are the only company that is focused on meth decontamination, and they are the specialists in cost effective affordable treatment and decontamination of hazardous substances in your home or workplace. Their skilled technicians will work out the extent of contamination and find the most cost effective solution for you. Chemcare is dedicated to making your property habitable again by a decontamination that will adhere to both their and the government's strict Ministry of Health guidelines, so to find out more please go to http://www.chemcare.co.nz .