Board Recommends Testing of Hair as New Option for Drug Screenings
This story appears in the Aug. 17 print edition of Transport Topics.
After two years of study, a federal drug advisory board has issued a recommendation that hair specimens be approved as an alternative for federal workplace drug-testing programs.
In a unanimous secret ballot on Aug. 7, and without public comment, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s nine-member Drug Testing Advisory Board agreed to forward a recommendation to SAMHSA Administrator Pamela Hyde that the agency “pursue” the hair-testing alternative.
If Hyde agrees, the recommendation then would be forwarded to the Department of Health and Human Services, which could issue a slate of proposed hair-testing guidelines for federal employees.
The Department of Transportation then could adopt all or part of the HHS hair-testing alternative for truck drivers and other “safety-sensitive” federal workers.
By forwarding the recommendation, the advisory board, heavily composed of drug-testing lab executives, in effect has eliminated any potential concerns “regarding the scientific methodology and forensic defensibility of hair testing,” as well as legal and public policy questions, said Ronald Flegel, chairman of the advisory board.
Flegel has said that a hair-testing mandate could take up to 18 months to put in place.
While some motor carriers already collect hair specimens for testing of would-be employees, under current federal government regulations, urinalysis is the only acceptable testing method for the pre-employment and random drug testing that carriers must conduct on drivers.
HHS has proposed also allowing oral swab drug testing as an option.
The drug tests cover five classes: marijuana, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines and methamphetamines, and phencyclidine.
Testing is required for pre-employment, a random check of drivers, reasonable suspicion, certain post-accident events, return to duty, and follow-up.
The SAMHSA advisory board over the past two years has been examining the results of more than 1,200 peer-reviewed papers published in professional journals, said Janine Cook, SAMHSA’s designated federal official to the board.
Since issuing a public request for information in May, SAMHSA has received 295 written comments with the vast majority generally supporting hair testing, Cmdr. Sean Belouin, of the U.S. Public Health Service, told the board.
Andrea Wohleber, an official with the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department and the only public commenter at the board’s Aug. 7 meeting, told the board that her organization opposes hair testing. She noted that a bill allowing hair testing has been introduced in Congress and could be passed “before you all here finish your work.”
Slow progress and an alleged lack of transparency in adopting a hair-testing standard have frustrated some in the trucking industry, including American Trucking Associations, which has accused SAMHSA of dragging its feet in approving protocols for hair testing.
In written comments in support of oral swab drug testing, American Trucking Associations said it also supports hair testing for pre-employment drug testing.
“Hair testing, on average, gives employers a 90-day window of an applicant’s past drug use,” ATA said. “Additionally, hair testing benefits from observed collection by a trained professional, and all prohibited drugs can be identified equally over the 90-day period.”
Such companies as Schneider, which ranks No. 7 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers, No. 23 C.R. England, Gordon Trucking and No. 3 J.B. Hunt Transport Services have used hair testing for some time and said it is more reliable than urinalysis.
However, some trade organizations representing truck drivers and commercial vehicle driver training schools were among those who said they have concerns about using hair specimens to drug test drivers.
In written comments, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association said that urine-based testing can detect recent drug use more quickly than hair testing, which can take from four to 10 days for hair containing the drug to grow far enough from the scalp, and OOIDA called hair testing a “work-in-progress.”
