Every safety director in the country wants to find a "window" into a person's future so that they can determine if they're a potential risk. After all, safety is about risk management. We talked about some ways to accomplish that last month in the discussion about Predictive Risk Modeling. Unfortunately we can't actually view the future but we can look at a person's past and current habits.

We're all aware of the driver qualification requirements. We get an MVR, investigate past employment and send prospective drivers for a drug screen. These are basic tools used by all motor carriers. However, some carriers have gone a step beyond in their search for relevant information about a prospective driver. They are using hair samples for pre-employment drug testing. Is it legal? Certainly. Does it meet the FMCSA standards for pre-employment testing? No, the carrier would still have to do the standard urine sample drug test. Why do what is essentially a duplicate test? Because they may yield different results.

After a substance is ingested, whether orally, smoked, snorted, or injected, metabolites are produced as the drug is processed by the human body. As these drugs and metabolites circulate in the blood stream, they enter and nourish the hair follicle and are then inserted into the hair strand. Testing the contents of the hair strand eliminates external contamination and removes the possibility that the person was simply around someone who, for example, was smoking marijuana.

Many drugs are detectable in a urine test only within a fairly short time frame, usually 3 – 5 days after use. Beyond that the person will test negative. Hair samples typically cover a period of 90 days giving a much broader look into the person's habits. C.R. England initiated this type of testing and out of 2,000 prospective drivers tested 2.8% failed the urine test. That's a pretty predicable number. But, 11% failed the hair test. Another company, Gordon Trucking, started testing this year and out of 170 candidates 10 failed the hair drug test.

The good news is that these two carriers improved their risk management by instituting this type of drug testing. The bad news is that one of the failed drivers may be driving for you right now. This type of testing is worthy of evaluation. Talk to a lab and discuss the details about cost, detection times, and how they avoid false positives. You may find that the cost to benefit ratio is acceptable. A plaintiff's attorney may ask, after an accident, did you perform due diligence when you evaluated this driver prior to hiring? In other words, shame on you for hiring the driver even though their drug test was negative. Hair testing can certainly screen out high risk drivers and you'll avoid hearing an attorney ask that question.

If you do a Google search on "hair testing for drugs" you'll undoubtedly run into links to web sites that offer products designed to "cleanse" the person and ensure a negative test result. This would be a good discussion point if you pursue this with a lab. Basically, once the metabolites enter the hair shaft they're locked in and no amount of shampoo or exotic elixirs is going to change that. Unfortunately some folks out there view all of this as a game and it's our job to figure out who they are and not hire them. Hair testing is another tool you can add to your process to increase due diligence and reduce risk.