My companion just lost an offer for a an amazing job to promote blood donation for a hospital (he believes in helping others and tried to make it his life's work). He has been out of work for 2 years do to 6 herniated disks do to an injury suffered on the job while working for the new york blood center. He was prescribed lidocain patches (700mg) for his intense pain. He lost the job offer at this new place because of a positive on his drug test. Could the patches have given a false positive? He wore the patch the day of the test as well. I desperately need info on this quick as this could mean the difference between loosing our home etc. We were dependent on this job.

Lidocaine/benzocaine/novocaine are not metabolized to the product that is
tested for cocaine.

http://www.firstlab.com/resources1.asp

What did he test positive for? Did they say which drug he tested positive for? or did they just say that he tested positive for narcotics?

One thing that I find interesting about drug tests is something I saw on the TV show MythBusters once - it is true that eating foods with Poppy seeds can cause someone to test positive for heroin in a drug test. On the show, they had volunteers take urine drug tests first (negative) then eat foods with poppy seeds, then get urine drug tested again, and the second drug test was positive.

So, did he eat anything with poppy seeds in it before his test?


Whatever the case may be, your husband has the right to request a full copy of the drug test results, including knowing what drug he tested positive for (note, some urine screen drug tests just test for "narcotics" and do not test for specific drugs, so if they just did the simple 'narcotic' test, it could be impossible to find out what drug caused the testing strip to show as a positive).

If he feels as if the test results were wrong, he has the right to request further testing, such as blood testing and even hair follicle testing (although, note that any further testing will be done at your expense, and drug testing can be quite expensive). Also note, it is very important to request this further testing IMMEDIATELY after you get the results that you believe are wrong (this is to ensure that drug addicts are not waiting for the drugs to exit their system and then requesting a second test when they know their drugs have cleared out).

A Hair follicle test however would clear all of this up, simply because a hair follicle test can show a full history of drug use for whatever time period it has taken for your hair to reach it's current length... in men with short hair the test will show a shorter time period than a man who has very long hair... in a man has no hair on his head, the hair follicle for testing can be taken from another area of the body - in a court ordered hair follicle test, they will take hair from whatever part of the body has the longest hair.

None of this will help him to get that particular job offer that he has already lost, but it could help him to get the next job -- although it could be quite expensive for you to pay for this testing out of your own pocket. It might be more sense financially to apply for a different job, and for future drug testing insist on a blood test, which is more accurate and more precise and less likely to return a false positive result.

MrsD is a very bright lady, please do not gloss over her response.

I love Poppy seeds... I have Marzetti dressing with them, occasionally!

They are well known false positive givers.

My understanding is that a second test is often given, when the first screen
fails. The first screening types are cheap and not extremely accurate.
So a second one which is more specific can weed out errors and false positives.

If the test was positive for marjuana...that substance stays in the body for months. And I have known people who tested positive on the first round,
due to passive inhalation alone.

But Lidoderms should not be showing up for any category, and that was the basic question.

Thanks Michael.

Yes,
Sometimes tests just show a false positive for some other reason, like a mistake in the lab. I remember having a test once in a specific job I was doing and it suggested that I'd been talking valium. Say what? I sure as heck had not been taking valium. It was no big deal at the time and I was told that it happens all the time that they get false positives.