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| | Feds
To Employ Hair, Sweat And Saliva Testing For Government Workers
New Technology Is Expensive And Not Without Serious Flaws, Concedes HHS
4/11/04
Washington, DC: Guidelines proposed Tuesday by the Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS) would allow federal agencies to collect samples of
employees' hair, sweat and saliva to test for illicit drugs. The proposed
changes, which are expected to become final in 180 days, significantly alter
existing federal regulations that allow drug testing programs to only collect
and screen urine for evidence of illicit drug use. About 400,000 federal workers
are subject to federal drug testing, and stand to be impacted by the new
regulations. In 2000, the most recent year for which figures are available,
urine tests were performed on 106,493 federal workers at a cost of $6.1 million,
according to the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
- which sets and oversees the federal drug testing guidelines. Of those tested,
532 persons tested positive for illicit drugs, as a cost to taxpayers of $11,466
per positive test result. Alternative
testing technology, specifically hair testing, is more expensive than
urinalysis. NORML Foundation Executive Director Allen St. Pierre criticized any
expansion of the current federal regulations, emphasizing that the changes will
neither increase workplace safety nor production. "These tests, in
particular hair testing, are for the most part unproved procedures unsupported
by the scientific literature or well-controlled clinical studies," he said.
"In addition, these tests do little, if anything, to detect an employee's
actual impairment on the job - which should be the employer's primary concern.
Rather, these tests allow employers to go on a virtual fishing expedition of
their employee's private, off-the-job personal habits and practices, none of
which are the employers' business." According to SAMHSA, hair testing,
saliva testing, and sweat patch testing all have significant limitations
regarding their real-world application. In the case of hair testing, which
detects drug metabolites that have passively diffused from the blood stream to
the base of the hair follicle, the agency warns that both environmental
contamination and hair color can significantly impact the accuracy of the test.
"The role of hair color is ... a major concern," SAMHSA says, noting
that "data show that higher concentrations of some drugs are found in dark
hair when compared to blond or red hair." Nevertheless, the agency
concludes, "Despite these suspected limitations, the department still
proposes to go forward with incorporating this new technology as an alternative
to urine for Federal agencies," which engage in pre-employment and random
testing. Environmental contamination also may negatively effect the accuracy of
oral testing, which detects the presence of parent drugs in the saliva.
"Further scientific study is needed to be able to differentiate between
whether the parent drug was present in the oral cavity due to drug use or
environmental contamination, i.e. the individual was present in a room where
others smoked marijuana, for example," SAMHSA says. As a result, the
proposed regulations encourage agencies to also collect a urine sample "at
the same time the oral fluid specimen is obtained" for confirmation
testing. Regarding the efficiency of sweat patch testing, which detects the
presence of both parent drugs and drug metabolites in the sweat while the patch
is applied to the skin, SAMHSA notes, "The Department knows from direct
experience ... that some individuals may not be able to wear the sweat patch for
the optimal period of time." The agency further noted that the majority of
sweat patch technology is not FDA-approved. Other proposed changes to the
federal government's workplace drug testing guidelines include encouraging the
use of rapid-response, point of collection devices for immunoassays, rather than
certified laboratory technology. Specimens that test presumptively positive for
drugs on these initial tests would then be referred to confirmatory testing at a
lab. The new guidelines also mandate that all federal agencies must henceforward
test for marijuana, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines, and phencyclidine (PCP), and
possibly MDMA (Ecstasy). Urine cutoff levels for cocaine metabolites and
amphetamines will also be significantly lowered under the new guidelines. For
more information, please contact either Allen St. Pierre or Paul Armentano of
the NORML Foundation at (202) 483-5500. The proposed federal workplace drug
testing guidelines are available online at: http://samhsa.gov/hottopics/click_drugtesting.html
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