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Why Does Testing For Long Term Abuse Matter?
Long term alcohol testing is important for employers screening applicants for a mentally demanding job, testing students for underage abuse, testing recovering addicts and as a tool for courts to decipher if a person was under the influence during a crime even if was committed two months ago. Any company employing mentally aware positions whether it be trucking, maritime or even politics could go bankrupt due to a lawsuit of one employee's mistake under the influence. At the very minimum, an accident can harm the safety and reputation of any organization. These are just a few of the multiple reasons long term alcohol abuse testing is necessary. The necessary testing also needs to be accurate and reliable.
How Alcohol Hair Testing Works
If a person has been asked to give a hair sample, a certified nurse will make an appointment to come to the person's home or place of work or school if a clinic is not available. Then a small sample is taken from the base of the head and is then either shipped or delivered to the laboratory where several tests will be performed to see if certain markers show up on the hair shaft. These markers called ethyl glucuronide, (EtG) are metabolites found in hair testing only when a person has consumed alcohol. is the special test that reveals a person's alcohol use over a long period of time. This test shows a history of abuse instead of hours or at most- a couple days like urine alcohol testing would. Because EtG testing can prove up to 12 months of alcohol abuse, it makes this test invaluable to employers screening for certain high profile or mentally stable positions like surgeons, pilots and childcare.
Many times alcohol testing will be combined with other forms, such as questionnaires and references from family or previous jobs to get an overall assessment. The cost of hair alcohol testing may be slightly higher than a urine sample test but the results far outweigh the latter. Hair alcohol testing now helps employers prescreen potential employees and truly know their alcohol consumption history instead of a person's history of last week.
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.
Key management with compulsory alcohol testing – this system will not allow vehicle keys or keys to access hazardous equipment to be released if the user does not pass an alcohol breath test.
The Health & Safety Executive states legal obligations … you have a Duty of Care to manage at work … including those responsible for the management and operation of hazardous equipment or company vehicles. Whatever the outcome, you and your company could be left to deal with the potential consequences.
Key management with compulsory alcohol testing
The highly acclaimed GB Alcolock 500 alcohol tester (Home Office approved) has been integrated to work with Traka electronic key management to ensure drivers (or operatives of any piece of potentially dangerous equipment) must first pass a breath test before keys can be withdrawn. Testing can be compulsory for every user or set to test a random sample of users.
After opening the Traka cabinet using PIN, access card or biometrics reader the user then selects the required key to a particular vehicle or piece of equipment. However, before the key is released the system display requests the user to blow into the Alcolock.
A five second blow and the system will confirm a Pass or a Fail. Only if Passed will the key be released. A Fail and the key will be locked in place. Furthermore the Fail will be logged in the Traka database together with the user's name.
The Traka integration provides a compulsory breath test before the keys can be released and is a highly cost effective method for ensuring staff are safe before driving or using equipment where excessive alcohol levels may cause danger or impair judgment.
The Alcolock enables management to ensure that operatives are safe in their work environment. Furthermore the duty of care that every business needs to implement is reinforced if every user is proven to be below legal alcohol limits.
Typical applications include:
• Fleet and Delivery vehicles
• Bus, Coach and Public Service vehicles
• Distribution Centres and Fork Lift Trucks
• Plant vehicles – excavators, dumper trucks and cranes
• Environments where dangerous or hazardous equipment is used
• Firearms and weaponry establishments
Electronic key management is used to ensure drivers only take keys to vehicles they are allowed (or to equipment that operatives are permitted to use) and that a record is kept as the key is withdrawn.
This ensures that the drivers have valid permits for the vehicle type (or equipment use) and that a computerized audit trail is generated so that in the event of driving offenses or dispute there is positive evidence of the driver concerned. Traka also ensures that the keys are returned after use and provides an easy method for finding out who has the key now or at any time in the past.
Electronic key management also makes it easy to record vehicle (or equipment) defects both to ensure the repairs are carried out quickly and efficiently and to quarantine dangerous or VOR vehicles.
Traka is in use extensively in the UK for all sizes of vehicle fleet and equipment management and typically shows significant operator savings, often with paybacks inside twelve months.