Employment drug testing has a significant role in safety of workplace environment. Many organizations had made it a practice for conducting employment drug testing. Pre-employment drug testing is conducted on job applicants before they are hired into the company. Many such types of drug testing are conducted by employers. Post accident drug testing is one of the types which is conducted at workplace.
A post accident drug test is conducted for testing employees after the occurrence of an accident on the job. An employee may or may not lose the job when this test is conducted. The main aim of post accident drug testing is giving protection to the company from liability in the event that the individual at the time of the accident is under the influence of drugs. It means that the company is saved from paying for some misapprehensions that happen, such as accidents. An argument can be made in the court that the person was intoxicated on job.
Employment drug testing is done in many ways using hair, urine, saliva, and blood. Certain types of tests such as pre-employment drug testing and random drug testing may be conducted by all of these samples. However, during post accident drug testing only blood and saliva samples are taken for tests. This is because the present or recent use of drug is detected in using saliva or blood samples. Conducting post accident drug testing helps in reducing the number of on-site job accidents.
Post-accident drug testing is done with the aim of detecting the present drug use by an employee. Sometimes the decision is taken immediately after the result is out. However, sometimes it takes a lot of time for taking any action on the concerned employee. Certain tests conducted on the spot may give positive result. But action has to be taken against the person only after conducting a laboratory test.
This type of employee drug testing is common in transportation industry. Many of the drivers are under the influence of drugs while driving. Suddenly if an accident occurs, post accident drug testing is conducted and proper action is to be taken on the driver. Certain citation is received by the driver under some state and local laws based on the injury and fatality.