Employers Find Great Relief for Public Safety With Etg Alcohol Testing

Screening employees for drug abuse is nothing new. The need to screen employees for alcohol abuse has always been a concern but hardly been possible with previous methods because prior testing methods were inaccurate and therefore a waste of company money.

Employers for doctors, pilots, drivers and other positions demanding 100% attention while ensuring the safety and responsibility for other people, want to make absolute certain of who they are investing in.

Besides the safety of the public, employers are also concerned about their reputation want to avoid lawsuits.

Previous methods to prescreen employees have been breath and saliva tests. A person who was under the influence of alcohol the previous night my not test positive at 9 am the night morning because of the rapid elimination of alcohol from the body. Besides employees, high schools and alcohol treatment centers among others have been looking for a need to accurately test for alcohol abuse.

Now there is an accurate way to test for chronic alcohol abuse, where there wasn’t a way before. A metabolite, ethyl glucuronide, (EtG) found in urine as well as hair is only found when a person has consumed alcohol. EtG has been reported to stay in the urine for up to 5 days after drinking, up to 2 days for a single drink and up to 5 days after heavy drinking, well after alcohol itself has been eliminated from the body. For many employers, this 5 day window isn’t enough to prove a real problem. An employee applying for a job could very well have been on vacation prior to the test or have been using hand sanitizer or other highly concentrated alcohol products. The development of hair alcohol testing changed everything.

A team of German and British scientists discovered that EtG metabolites could be found in a small sample of scalp hair going back months, even up to a year’s worth of substance abuse. Hair alcohol testing now helps employers prescreen potential employees and truly know their alcohol consumption history.

This unique and fascinating discovery helps prove as well as disprove alcohol abuse in court cases like child custody and occurrences where alcohol was thought to be a factor but wasn’t able to be proven for lack of evidence and more.

Employers can feel confident knowing they hired the right person for the job and the public can feel better knowing that highly certified and respected employees were accurately screened for the benefit of public safety.