Message from Arnold Panzer, MD, MRO and Medical Director about the amended and revised regulations for 2001.
The amended 49CFR 40 has gone into affect as of January 18, 2001. I would advise all our clients to check out some of our recommended links and get a copy of the new regulations. |
| If you have any questions please feel
free to E-mail me or call me. We conducted a conference on March 21, 2001 to discuss the
new regulations. Some of the topics that I covered at the conference were…. 1. Agreements, waivers, failure to co-operate letters. 2. Failure to Co-operate which could lead to failure to be in compliance which could lead to sanctions and fines from the DOT. Remember if you fail to send us employee updates you can have an incorrect number of randoms performed for your company, which could cause a problem when you are audited. The same problem arises when you fail to randomly test an employee who was pulled in a random selection. If we are not notified that he is no longer employed we cannot help you. Before your company gets to the point of noncompliance , we will be sending you a Failure to Co-operate letter, so you can make the appropriate correction. 3. Public Interest Exclusion and who is responsible for the drug and alcohol testing program….you or us???? 4. Handling of safety sensitive employees who test positive, substituted, adulterated or unable to perform test. 5. Dilute specimens policy. 6. Substance abuse professionals and their role in the DOT arena 7. The important issues of the remainder of the new regulations 8. Additional services that Land Sea and Air will be offering in the future. |
| Recently we have been experiencing an increase in adulterated and substituted urine samples. Remember to read the regulations about these specimens. A substituted or adulterated sample is considered a refusal to test which for the purposes of the regulations has the same significance as a positive test and as a result the safety sensitive employee must follow the same steps as a positive tested employee. On a national level adulterated and substituted specimens are more frequently encountered now because of products sold in health food stores and over the internet. See…http://www.hightimes.com |
| To properly identify these specimens the testing laboratories are performing validity tests on a voluntary basis. Once the Department of Health and Human Services publishes official guidelines for Validity Testing, it will become mandatory. |
| Please update your company information by accessing a company data base form on our web site and send it to us…Email, Fax, mail , phone. |
| I would like to thank all who attended for helping to make the conference a success. |
| The PowerPoint presentation that was given during the seminar is now available on our web site. |