DRUG TESTING
No business is immune to the problems associated with the abuse of drugs and alcohol. Substance abuse contributes to on-the-job accidents, lower productivity, greater absenteeism, higher health-care costs and heightened threat to the health and safety of employees.
DeLisle helps companies reduce the risk by performing substance-abuse testing to detect and deter substance abuse. DeLisle combines industries standard testing methodologies with our experience to ensure clients receive accurate results. DeLisle offers a full range of services customized to assist clients in implementing a cost effective substance abuse testing program.
Testing can have a number of purposes, including:
- Pre-employment screening - where applicants are subject to passing a drug and or alcohol test
- For cause testing - where a trained manager identifies apparent signs of impairment through drug or alcohol use
- Routine testing - where the workforce are notified in advance of testing
- Random - unannounced testing used largely for employees in safety sensitive or business critical posts
- Post accident testing - following an accident or incident where an employee is suspected of drink or drug related impairment or required by employers written program
In all instances, an employee's permission must be sought before a testing regime is introduced. Here, it can be helpful if a suitable testing regime and collection protocol is discussed at all levels within the company as part of the company's initial evaluation process. Generally, successful policies are those that have the agreement and backing of the whole workforce and are drawn up following a thorough consultation process.
The process of policy implementation should include substance misuse awareness training for all employees along with training for managers to help them identify the signs and symptoms of drug misuse. Employees with a dependency problem should be encouraged to seek early advice and help.
TYPES OF DRUG TESTING
The main testing matrices for drugs are blood, urine, oral fluid and hair. Blood tests are expensive and invasive and require medically trained staff so are infrequently used. Urine, oral fluid and hair tests can be used in different circumstances depending on the information sought.
 |
Hair testing analysis can provide a profile of drug use from one week up to approximately three months. This can be useful where evidence of a long-term history of abstinence is needed for example for pre-employment testing or in monitoring progress in the treatment of addiction. |
|---|
 |
Urine is the most established and researched test and is considered the gold standard for drugs of abuse testing in terms of accuracy and reliability. Rapid result tests are commonly used in the first instance to screen out negative samples. Test results are available in minutes and disputed positive tests can be sent to a laboratory for confirmation and specific drug analysis. A urine test shows a history for most drug groups of between one to four days. With cannabis this detection window can increase to approximately three weeks. |
|---|
 |
Oral fluid testing has recently been introduced as an alternative or supplementary test alongside urine. As with urine tests rapid results tests may be used as a screen out tool for negative samples, requiring only disputed positive results to be sent to a laboratory for confirmation. Oral fluid tests detect drugs that have been taken over the last 24 hours. The main advantage of these tests is that no special facilities are required to carry out the test procedure. However oral fluid testing is less effective at detecting cannabis and benzodiazepine use and it is not always possible for donors to produce sufficient oral fluid for the test, particularly those abusing stimulants such as amphetamine and ecstasy. |
|---|
The different detection windows of urine and oral tests make them better suited to different purposes. The longer window for urine tests makes this method most appropriate for pre-employment screening.
Use of oral fluid as the sole test in routine or random testing means that donors need only abstain for a twenty-four hour period to be undetectable. The longer detection window for urine tests means that results may be more consistent with drug usage, but this gain should be weighed against the fact in most instances testing is not concerned with detecting private illegal drug use.
"For cause" or post incident testing can use a combination of oral and urine testing. A positive reading from an oral test by itself will only indicate that a drug or drugs have been taken in the last 24 hours or so. This is too long of a window to make a reliable assessment about the donor's likely impairment at the time of, or just before the test.
Drugs on average take two to six hours to appear in urine and half an hour or more to appear in oral fluid. When the two tests are used simultaneously these variable delays can help narrow down the time at which drugs were consumed. If evidence of drugs appears in an oral fluid test but not in a urine test it is likely that they were taken within the last two hours suggesting that the donor may have been impaired at the time of incident.
Contact Greg for more information
