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Changes for Drug Testing Regulations

Posted By: Tammy Scully

Did you know?

UTC has reviewed the new federal regulation. Changes regarding drug testing: As always, UTC follows and complies with these rules for all urine collections. The Department of Transportation (DOT) issued a final rule change to its CFR 49 Part 40 Regulations on July 25, 2008. This change makes cheating on drug testing harder and will cover approximately 12.1 million transportation employers, safety-sensitive transportation employees, labs, collectors, and medical review officers. The change becomes effective August 25, 2008.

An outline of the changes is as follows:

  1. The Final Rule makes it MANDATORY for laboratories to test all DOT specimens for validity, making sure that the urine sample has not been adulterated and/or substituted.
  2. Observed collections will be REQUIRED for all return-to-duty and follow-up drug testing.
  3. During observed collections, prosthetic devices used to carry clean urine will be checked for via the observer having the donor raise and lower clothing.
  4. In an attempt to hinder the manufacturing of adulterated specimens, the Final Rule will no longer list tables and charts outlining the adulterants and the cutoff levels for which laboratories are testing.
  5. The following instances will now be considered "refusal to test":
    1. The donor is in possession of or wearing a prosthetic device meant to interfere with the collection process;
    2. The donor refuses to follow the collector's/observer's instructions to raise and lower clothing per the new ruling;
    3. The donor admits to the collector or Medical Review Officer that he/she substituted or adulterated the specimen.
  6. The Final Rule requires drug-testing laboratories to report semi-annual statistical summaries on all DOT testing to the DOT.

The full text of this DOT final rule can be found at the following:

http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/E8-14218.pdf or
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/E8-14218.htm