Types of Drug Tests – Which One is Best for Your Organization?
No matter what type of business you operate, employee drug tests are essential to your reputation, safety and bottom line. Choosing which types of drug tests to perform on your applicants and employees can be a challenge. With these helpful tips from our team at Private Eyes, you’ll be able to select the best types of drug tests for your organization.
Urine Drug Test
Urine drug testing is the gold standard. This method is popular for screening applicants and new hires and for random checks of employees. Urine drug tests are the only type of drug tests that meet federal mandates for drug testing. Urine specimens first go through a screening test. If a screening test shows a positive result, then confirmatory testing is performed. Confirmatory tests use mass spectrometry and chromatography to check for the presence of specific substances. The window of detection for urine tests is one to four days. These drug tests are cost-effective, stand up to legal challenges and offer instant results.
Hair Drug tests
Drug testing of human hair expands the window of detection to about 90 days. This is a good option if your company wants to check for habitual drug use. It also has a higher sensitivity than a urine drug test. Hair samples must be collected by a trained technician, so applicants and employees are unlikely to adulterate the specimens. A con of hair tests is that they can’t detect drug use within five to seven days of the test.
Oral Fluid/Saliva Drug Test
Saliva drug testing is ideal for large-scale use, such as recruitment and hiring events. Collecting the sample is easy, and specimens are difficult to adulterate. The window of detection is 48 hours before the specimen collection. Technicians can directly observe the collection of the specimen. These tests are cost-effective, and instant results are available. Saliva drug testing has the lowest cost of all drug test types.
Have questions? Speak to an expert for more information.