False positives in drug testing are an Achilles’ heel for accuracy in determining user guilt or innocence. Errors in drug testing can exist for anyone of any testing age, race, sex, or blood type, and studies have shown an error rate due to this phenomenon of between 1 and 5%, even with multiple types of drug testing kits. False positive results are especially prevalent in the case of amphetamines, which alone have literally dozens of legal, over-the-counter substances (mostly cold and flu medications) that routinely indicate the drug. Substances as benign as migraine medications, poppy seeds, tonic water, Excedrin and Amoxicillin can falsely indicate LSD, cocaine, opiates and marijuana. But the largest factor in false positives is from faulty, non FDA approved, cheap urine drug tests.
In the realm of home drug testing on children by parents who suspect drug and/or alcohol abuse, Sharon Levy, M.D., M.P.H., a pediatrician at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital in Boston says, "Laboratory testing for drugs of abuse is a technically challenging procedure, even for medical professionals, and tests performed at home by untrained parents might have higher rates of error than professional tests," according to Levy.
What Produces False Positives?
There are plenty of legal substances which can produce a false positive drug test result. Many of these are over-the-counter medications, while many others are “everyday” substances, such as Vitamin B2 and shampoo containing hemp (THC), Chinese miracle herb pills (benzodiazopines), Ma Huang (Ephedra sinica) false positives for amphetamines and ecstasy; and in some cases, disease itself – Diabetes (opiates) and liver disease (opiates, ecstasy, THC and amphetamines), and kidney disease (cocaine). Hempseed oil gives a false positive for THC. Nyquil Nighttime Cold Medicine will test positive for Methadone up to two days.
The Journal of Clinical Chemistry Vol.33 No.6, 1987 reports: "the quantities of poppy seed ingested in this study (25 and 40 g) may be expected to be contained in one or two servings of poppy seed cake. Therefore, poppy seeds represent a potentially serious source of falsely positive results in testing opiate abuse." Clinical Chemistry goes on to conclude: “Not only is it difficult to distinguish heroin or morphine abuse from codeine, but dietary poppy seeds can give a strong positive result for urinary opiate of several days duration that is confirmed by GC/MS analysis".
Your body’s own enzyme secretion can also produce a false positive. Dr. John Morgan of the Dept. of Pharmacology of New York City University writes: "A false positive test could occur in some individuals because they excrete unusually large amounts of endogenons lysozyme or malate dehydrogenase." Dr. Morgan judges that natural enzyme interference may run as high as 10% of positive samples.
How To Avoid False Positives?
The best way to avoid these false positives results and determine the true drug history of an individual is with an FDA approved urine drug testing kit or a home drug test that has its results verified by a laboratory, such as a hair follicle test. There are accurate home options available for parents and simple yet effective drug testing available for business, just make sure to avoid false positives results by using FDA approved drug tests.
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