"When I was 11 years old, I read everything Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes," Dr. Dennis Canfield confides,"and that's who I wanted to be. I decided this is what I wanted to do. There aren't many people who can say they started thinking about something at 11 and ended up doing it at the age of 55." Entirely true. Dennis Canfield, Ph.D., is today the Manager of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA's) Toxicology and Accident Research Laboratory at the Civil Aeromedical Institute in Oklahoma City. The laboratory is responsible for the analysis of all fatal aviation accidents occurring nationwide. Its mandate is to detect the presence of all drugs in victims of aircraft mishaps, whether general or commercial. "If it flies in the air - even a balloon - and an accident occurs and somebody dies, we'll receive specimens for testing," he notes. Major surface accidents are occasionally reviewed as well.
	Chemical Testing When samples from an accident victim arrive at the door, it is the laboratory's job to turn up the presence of anything suspicious. That would include amphetamines, cocaine and other banned substances, as well as prescriptive medications such as anti-depressants, hypertensive drugs for cardio-vascular disease, and the like. Technicians even search for evidence of over-the-counter drugs, from antihistamines all the way down to aspirin. "We want to determine if the person was treating a medical condition that might have interfered with his performance," says Dr. Canfield. "Although the drug itself may not be an impairing material, the drug may be treating an incapacitating illness, which we need to consider in our evaluation of the accident." Flying High The sleuthing that Canfield and his laboratory colleagues perform occasionally turns up some surprises. "We determined one pilot was having seizure problems that were not reported as part of his medical certification. We discovered that by detecting the medications he was taking." In another case, they counted the presence of 24 different drugs in the remains of the imprudent pilot. "He was flying, all right," says Canfield, "but not in the way we normally think of the activity." When the laboratory tests high-profile government officials and celebrities who have died in flying accidents, it may become a focus of considerable media attention. "We also test for designer drugs," says Canfield. "And we have occasionally identified a new compound that has never been reported."
	Confirmation by GC/MS The laboratory is also involved in some interesting research projects. One will be to measure the effect of hypoxia on users of antihistamines. Using the Civil Aeromedical Institute's (CAMI's) altitude chamber, subjects who have previously ingested antihistamines will be studied at ground level, 8000 feet and 12,500 feet for impairment. They'll also be trying to measure the plasma-blood/whole-blood ratios, which are crucial in forensic work. Those values are absent from the literature for many currently available drugs. "We're seeing quite a few accidents linked to chloropheneramine," says Canfield. "It's an antihistamine found in most of the cold formulations you can buy off the shelf, but it's a sedative drug and can be impairing." The lab's studies will determine clinically just how impairing it can be in the aviation environment. "We're doing a particularly interesting project right now on seratonin metabolytes," Canfield enthuses. "Alcohol produces a metabolyte which is otherwise nearly absent. When you drink, it rises rapidly and remains elevated for a considerable period of time. Its presence is extremely important to us because alcohol is formed post-mortem as part of bacterial action. The metabolyte may provide the indicator we need to determine whether or not the person actually consumed alcohol within 16 hours of his demise." So the laboratory is in the process of developing a procedure which can be used to easily and quickly isolate those metabolytes. The procedure is currently in the developmental stages. HP - Present at the Creation Canfield opened the FAA's forensic laboratory in October of 1990. By the time it opened, he had already spent a year setting it up and buying the equipment. Calling on his five years' experience with the New Jersey State Police crime lab and 10 years' experience as Director of Forensic Science for the University of Southern Mississippi, he selected the best equipment and personnel possible to complete the mission of the laboratory. Most of the gas chromatographs/mass spectrometers (GC/MS) and high-pressure liquid chromatographs (HPLC) and other equipment have come from HP.
	Cardiovascular Drugs in Blood Occasionally, he has to use all the instruments at his command to make the determination he needs. "In one case, we initially identified something as pseudoephedrine with an HPLC screening method we use here," Canfield recalls. "Then we used a regular GC and it also showed the possibility of pseudoephedrine. Then we took it to a GC/mass spec with an HP infra-red detector on it and the mass spec showed that it wasn't pseudoephedrine." Ultimately, they determined that the methanol used in the sample extraction process had become contaminated with formaldehyde, and had converted the pseudoephedrine to a compound that had never been reported in the literature before.
	Chemical Analysis "To me, discovering a new compound is like walking on the moon," Canfield says. "You know you're the first person who's ever seen it." So the FAA's incarnation of Sherlock Holmes goes about his business daily in a state of considerable enthusiasm, working away with HP's various manifestations of a specialized magnifying glass. Only he has a little more magnification at his command than Sherlock ever dreamed would be possible.