Health Blog

 The U.S. federal government has overhauled the drug testing program of federal employees to include testing of workers’ saliva, hair, and sweat, This change is expected to be a catalyst for business to modify their drug screening methods and procedures for hundreds of thousands of their employees. (more…)

Hair analysis results have been admitted as evidence of drug use and exposure by federal and state courts.
Hair drug tests and other forms of drug screening are highly controversial. With new U.S. government guidelines that seek to expand drug testing, analysis of the accuracy of hair drug tests are being analyzed by a wide range of legal and medical professionals. Workplace drug testing is being criticized on general terms as there is controversary over whether a positive drug test result has any meaningful relationship to work performance and it encourages lifestyle discrimination, is an invasion of privacy and smacks of an Orwellian “Big Brother” attitude In government and the workplace. In spite of misgivings about the efficacy and accuracy of hair drug tests and other drug screens, millions of people now or will be subject to random drug testing at work and home. Putting aside the implications of the new federal drug tests that have been proposed, hair drug tests are becoming more common in business settings, public and private schools, and at home. (more…)

Laboratory testing of urine has become commonplace. Urine drug tests are administered by a wide range of private companies utilizing laboratories of varying quality and technicians with a wide variety of skills. Many things can skew urine drug tests. One obvious problem is the way an individual laboratory monitors the correct collection of the person being tested.
Another is the quality of the urine specimens that are collected, contamination, the effect of transportation delays and variables including the issue of having multiple people handling and storing the specimen. Problems of dilution or adulteration of samples of urine drug tests cannot be underestimated. Follow up testing should be part of the procedure so that adulterated urine samples can be detected.
These private companies that administer urine drug tests are in business to make money. They have a vested interest in participating in a concerted effort by certain government agencies and certain politicians and religious leaders to foist drug testing on as many people as possible. They have sold this intrusive and dubious plan through scare tactics often involving the fear of lost workplace productivity or workplace safety. (more…)

Recently there has been extensive research on the use of saliva in drug testing. A person’s saliva has certain advantages and certain disadvantages when comparing the use of urine in testing for the presence of drugs. The most obvious advantage is simply that the collection procedure is easier and less prone to possible efforts to beat the drug test by substituting a clean drug test sample as is sometimes the case in urine drug testing. The ease at which a person’s saliva can be tested make saliva drug tests less invasive than other forms of drug testing. The collection of saliva for saliva drug tests is easier and safer when compared to urine or blood. (more…)