FIRMS TURN TO HAIR TEST TO CHECK FOR DRUG USE

Employers nowadays want a strand of your hair rather than a cup of
your urine.

The Boston Police Department changed to hair testing a year ago. So
did Illinois-based Kraft Foods.

"We felt the hair test was a much better testing methodology," said
Kraft Foods spokeswoman Kathy Kanuth.

Even the federal government, which still relies heavily on urine
tests, is considering changing its regulations and procedures to
include hair and other testing methods. Final regulations are expected
in about 18 months. One reason for the switch is that employers are
facing a new industry with an odd mandate: help workers beat urine
tests.

Sold mainly through the Internet and publications like High Times, the
products touted by this cottage industry have names like Clear Choice,
Urine Aid, and Urine Luck. The merchandise runs from additives that
mask illegal substances to a fake phallus with a pouch to hold clean
urine.

But making the switch from urine to hair testing might not be easy.
Labor unions, privacy advocates, and groups like the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, would likely
denounce a governmental switch because of potential privacy
violations. NORML also argues that hair testing could discriminate
against African-Americans and pregnant women, raising legal concerns.

Others wonder whether there are enough labs to support widespread use
of hair tests by government contractors.

"There are 50 to 60 certified laboratories that do nothing else but
urine tests and there are thousands of sites to collect urine
samples," said Dr. Robert Swotinsky, director of occupational health
at Fallon Clinic in Worcester. There are now only two major
laboratories that test hair, Swotinsky said.

One of the labs is owned and operated by Cambridge-based Psychemedics
Corp. It screens hair samples for cocaine, heroine, PCP's, Ecstasy,
and marijuana.

Typically, the hair is clipped at an occupational medical center,
collection site, or the workplace by a trained individual. The hair is
placed in a container, sealed, and shipped to Psychemedic's laboratory
in California.

There, technicians liquify it and test for metabolites, substances the
body produces while processing drugs. In most cases, test results are
returned within 48 hours.

Psychemedics credits employer angst over beat-the-test strategies with
boosting company sales to $16 million in 2002, up from $2 million a
decade earlier.

"In 1987, when we were just getting started, we made nothing in the
first few years," said Ray Kubacki, president and chief executive. "We
were just trying to get our tests together. Now, we're adding between
250 and 270 clients per year. Over the last three years, we added 800
clients and the majority of them were employers who wanted to switch
from urine to hair testing."

Today, the company has 2,600 clients, up from 200 in
1991.

Not all employers are switching -- or even drug testing. The sluggish
economy and declines in hiring budgets caused firms that had no
critical reason to test workers to curtail the practice. Today, 67
percent of US companies conduct drug tests, reports the American
Management Association. Of those, 20 percent test both hair and urine
and 30 percent test saliva. The remainder only test urine, said Laura
Shelton, executive director of the Drug and Alcohol Testing Industry
Association.

The 1,100-member group has asked the US Department of Transportation
to require hair testing as an alternative to the standard urine test.
The organization, a vocal representative of the $4 billion drug
testing industry, believes federal adoption of alternatives like hair
screening would prompt private employers to do the same.

Why bother? Shelton contends hair and saliva testing would put firms
that help workers cheat out of business because it's harder to mask
drugs in hair than it is in urine. Even a new crop of shampoos that
offer to wash away signs of drug use by stripping the hair can't
prevent labs from detecting illegal substances in the hair shaft, she
said.

The reason: Drugs are absorbed into the hair follicle and shampoos
only touch the outer layer of the hair strand. From the follicle, drug
traces are deposited into the center of each hair strand, forming a
history of usage that can remain in hair from months to years,
depending on hair length.

"The longer the piece of hair, the longer the history of drug use,"
said Dick Etter, vice president of Northwest Toxicology, a urine and
hair testing firm. "Deposits of drugs in hair can go through the
entire length of hair, possibly for years. But, for practical
purposes, the hair sample is collected from close to the scalp and
that will show drug use from three to six months."

What happens if the worker is bald? "You can collect hair from other
parts of the body, including chest hair, underarm hair, even leg
hair," said Shelton. "If you have no body hair, then you do not get a
hair test. You are switched to a saliva test instead."

By contrast, urine tests offer a shorter history of drug use because
the illegal substance remains in the system for approximately three
days. And urine test results can be "beaten" by abstaining from drug
use for several days or drinking large quantities of water, said Dr.
Brian Linder, corporate medical director at Houston-based Marathon Oil
Co.

At Gillette Co. in Boston, hair tests that come back positive are
retested using an even more sophisticated technique to confirm the
initial analysis, said. Dr. J. Brooks Watt, director of corporate
medical services. He said Gillette switched to hair testing because
the screen hones in on "consistent, routine, and significant drug
use." That troubles Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the NORML
Foundation. He said workers who have turned their lives around could
be penalized for activity they are no longer engaged in because prior
usage showed up in hair tests. St. Pierre also agrued that the tests
could garner misleading results from African-Americans, graying
adults, and pregnant women.

"With race, there is a difference in the type of oils and sheens that
are naturally produced in the hair of different ethnic groups," said
St. Pierre. "African-American hair, for example, could produce
minerals that are not common in Caucasions, especially very white
people with thin hair. The workers' hair type could cause a drug to
remain in the hair significantly longer or for shorter periods of time.

NORML also contends that a pregnant woman could test positive even
though she has never used drugs. "When a woman conceives, her body
generates a whole series of different enzymes that could impact the
results of a hair test," said St. Pierre. Entrepreneur Dennis
Catalano, cofounder of Puck Technology, said he has privacy concerns.
Catalano's California-based company sells a $150 prosthetic penis that
comes with a pouch to hold clean urine and tubing to dispense it. The
device is strapped around the waist with a belt. Called The
Whizzinator, it was "designed to keep your bodily fluids out of the
hands of people who should not have it and preserve privacy as much as
we can today," he said in a phone interview.

"There are hundreds of things besides drugs that can be deduced from
hair testing information, including genetic information, health
information, or any use of psychotropic drugs for mental illness,"
Catlano said.

Northwest Toxicology's Etter said both labs and employers are barred
from collecting and dispensing private medical information about
workers. Under federal law, he said, labs cannot use hair, urine, or
saliva samples to collect genetic or medical information. As for St.
Pierre's argument that hair tests are potentially discriminatory,
Shelton said: "The texture of your hair has no bearing on the test. .
. . Also, the enzymes in pregnant women wouldn't be a factor because
the tests are only looking for specific enzymes that are formed when
the body metabolizes drugs."