Urine drug testing is a procedure of chemical analysis designed to screen patients or individuals for drug abuse. It is also used to ensure that a person is substance-free before undergoing any medical procedure.
Drug screening, also known as toxicology screening is an effective method to determine possible accidental or deliberate overdose and poisoning. If the person is suspected of using illegal substance, urine tests can assess the classification and prescription dosage of illegal drugs used by such an individual.
Drug toxicity is clearly known with urine drug screening. Both for medical or legal intentions, urine drug tests are helpful in determining the drug dependency or drug presence in the body. In many circumstances, urine drug testing is a widespread practice before and during employment.
In almost all careers and occupations, employees and applicants are required to submit themselves to drug screening. The drug testing can be periodic, random or post-incident to existing employees. To applicants, drug test is a requirement they need to comply.
Of particular requirement are drug tests for offices such as law enforcement and transportation. The transportation industry includes drivers of trucks, buses, taxis, and private transportation services. Employees and pilots of airlines, workers of railroads and crew of shipping lines whether commercial or cargo are not spared.
Urine drug testing is able to discover general classes of chemical compounds including amphetamines, opiates, benzodiazepines and barbiturates. It is also effective in detecting cocaine, marijuana and phencyclidine or PCP.
However, drug screening from urine cannot distinguish prescription drugs from illegal drugs belonging to the same class. For example, if you are taking prescribed codeine pills and another individual uses heroin, both of you will turn out positive for opiates through urine drug tests.
There are also ‘false-positive’ incidences in which individuals that are using over-the-counter medications to have positive results on drug tests despite not using any prescription or illegal drugs. There are two types of urine drug test-a screening test and a confirmatory test.
Screening tests use an immunoassay to find the parent drug or metabolite. This is the type of test that screens for cocaine, marijuana, opiates and PCPs. If you are using amphetamines, benzodiazepines or methadone, screening tests can detect such drugs.
Confirmatory urine drug testing is accomplished through gas chromatography/mass spectrometry or GC/MS and High-performance liquid chromatography or HPLC. Confirmatory test is very specific; hence, it is effective in performing test to determine the specific drug present inside your body.
In most cases, when you turn out positive on screening test, a confirmatory test is done shortly. While urine drug tests are remarkable in detecting drugs, they are not able to tell the dosage of drugs ingested or the methods of drug usage.
The common approaches for using illegal drugs are intravenous, oral and inhalation. The detection time of drugs from Urine drug testing can be between one day and three days. The rate of excretion depends on the differences in your metabolism or urinary function. Hence, the timing of drug test must correlate to the information on the latest time of drug ingestion.
Author Resource:-
Go to http://www.screeningone.com for help in drug screening of employees. We do employment screening for companies or individuals. We have an Instrumented Rapid 5-panel 5 minute urine drug testing. We test urine for a variety of drugs. Come to Urine drug testing and learn how we can help your company with drug screening.
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