06.25.08
Posted in Drug Abuse and Statistics, Employers, General, Laboratories, Press Release, Regulations, TPA at 5:00 pm by administrator
Published in today’s Federal Register is a Department of Transportation Final Rule:
Procedures for Transportation Workplace Drug and Alcohol Testing Programs
In summary:
1. This Final Rule makes it mandatory for laboratories to test all DOT specimens for specimen validity (i.e., adulterants and urine substitutes) and for laboratories to follow all Department of Health and Human Resources (HHS) protocols for doing so.
2. Observed collections will afford less privacy in order to guard against employee use of items designed specifically to beat the testing process.
a. Directly observed collections will continue to occur only when there is a specific reason to believe that an employee may be attempting, or have sufficient reason, to evade the testing process.
b. Items such as prosthetic devices designed to carry clean urine will be checked for by observers with both male and female donors. The observer will have the employee raise and lower clothing, and then put it back into place for the observed collection.
c. Observed collections will now be required, rather than optional, for all return-to-duty and follow-up drug testing.
3. In an effort to thwart those who would manufacturer products designed to adulterate specimens, the Final Rule will no longer have easy-to-follow tables and charts outlining the adulterants for which laboratories are testing and the scientific cutoff levels at which laboratories are testing them.
4. Definitions in the Final Rule have been changed to harmonize with the HHS.
5. During an invalid result Medical Review Officer (MRO) review, an employee admission of adulterating or substituting a specimen is now a refusal to test.
6. Pursuant to MRO requests, the Final Rule will close the potentially endless loop on invalid specimen results; and employees requiring negative results [for example, pre-employment tests], when they have medical reasons for providing invalid results, will be able to obtain them through medical evaluations to rule out signs and symptoms of drug use.
7. The Final Rule will also streamline and simplify the potential myriad of complicated laboratory-confirmed and MRO-verified drug test results.
8. The Final Rule requires drug testing laboratories to report to DOT semi-annual statistical summaries on all of their DOT testing.
9. The Final Rule effective date is August 25, 2008.
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10.22.07
Posted in Drug Abuse and Statistics, General, Laboratories at 8:11 pm by administrator
article from Norchem Laboratories (2001)
It is frequently claimed that a positive THC test resulted from passive marijuana smoke inhalation (second-hand smoke). Repeated studies have consistently demonstrated that this is very unlikely. The following studies show no instance where passive inhalation of marijuana smoke, even under extreme conditions, caused urine specimens of non-marijuana users to test positive for THC using the screening cutoff of 50 and the confirmation cutoff level of 15 ng/mL.
Perez-Reyes and co-workers conducted the first study in 1983. The experiment consisted of three different phases, one conducted in an automobile and two in a small room. Of the specimens collected for analysis, two specimens were found positive for THC metabolites by the EMIT screening test at a cut-off level of 20 ng/ml. One of these was measured by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and gave only 3.9 ng/ml, well below cut-off.
In 1984 Law and colleagues performed a passive inhalation study in a 120 square foot room. Four nonsmokers played cards over a 3 hour period while six others smoked marijuana in this small room. The THC concentrations found in the urine of the card players did not exceed 7 ng/ml. The authors concluded that the amount of THC metabolites detected in the urine of nonsmokers is clearly dependent on the size and ventilation of the room and on the amount of marijuana smoked.
Morland performed a study in 1985 using a car with smokers who puffed either marijuana or hashish in the presence of nonsmoking subjects. Analysis of the urine samples from the nonsmokers showed no detectable levels of THC in the hashish study. Those passively exposed to marijuana smoke did show occasional urine levels that were positive at concentrations ranging from 14 to 30 ng/ml, but none above cut-off.
Cone and co-workers performed a series of rigorous double-blind studies between 1986 and 1987. The exposure conditions of these studies were more severe than would be expected under “real world” conditions. The maximum urine concentration of THC by GC/MS analysis was only 12 ng/ml.
Mule and coworkers conducted a study in 1988 involving eight marijuana smokers, each smoking four cigarettes and three nonsmokers passively inhaling the marijuana smoke in a closed 100 square foot room with no windows. He consistently reported less than 10 ng/ml of THC metabolites as a result of passive inhalation.
All these studies show that although it is true that passive inhalation of marijuana smoke results in absorption of THC in the body, none of the levels from the non-marijuana users were high enough to cause a positive result, by current cut-off standards.
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