Drug use and abuse within a workplace place risk on a business’s safety and productivity. Employers have higher odds of possible workplace hazards and potential employee absences. What follows this potential reality is the key to a businesses’ success. Pre-employment drug screening is of the utmost importance. The most common method of drug testing prior to employment is utilizing a collected urine specimen for screening.
However, hair follicle testing has become an increasingly useful tool recently. General hair analysis can reveal details that a urine drug test result simply cannot. Here are the benefits of hair drug testing to help expand overall comprehension, and determine if utilizing such testing may be directly advantageous to your own business.
General Hair Analysis
A single hair on an individual’s head can provide a whole slew of information about a person—more than anyone would initially realize. Hair strands typically grow up to six years before falling out in order for new strands to grow in. Throughout this hair lifecycle, hair shafts absorb blood, chemicals, substances, toxins, and even sweat both in and possibly around a person.
As hair grows, drugs in the bloodstream are absorbed into the hair shaft. And no, these drugs aren’t like shampoo and conditioner that can be simply washed out. Rather, drugs absorbed into a hair shaft are similar to permanent hair dye. Drugs take several months to leave the bloodstream out of a strand.
Drug Detection Period
As mentioned above, because hair vitally depends on blood for growth, strands absorb directly from the blood at their root. Based on this fact, hair follicle testing is the only available drug testing method capable of providing a longer detection period. One of the top benefits of hair drug testing is the length of this detection period.
Hair drug tests determine the presence of a substance from three months previous or up to 90 days. Urine drug testing only has a window of up to 7 days, which is a much shorter timeframe. Due to this longer timeframe of detection, hair drug testing can result in more than twice the number of positives and distinguish abusers from occasional users.
Hair Follicle Testing Precision
Besides the longer drug detection period, hair follicle testing is also more precise than a standard urine drug screening. Its effectiveness can determine an ongoing substance abuse problem. Comparable to urinalysis, a hair strand test is at least 5x more sensitive in its very nature, revealing further information with deeper analysis if required.
There’s also no risk of tampering or switching collected samples, as officials are non-intrusive to gather the hair directly to be tested. Cheat-proof hair follicle drug tests are accessible from suppliers to provide top-quality testing products for specific needs with dependable turnaround times. In the long-run, hair drug testing is able to provide a cost-effective method to ensure a safe and drug-free workplace.
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