Passive alcohol tests measure alcohol in the air, which may come from an open beer can or the exhaled breath of an intoxicated person.

There are two procedures required to maintain any breath alcohol testing instrument in accurate condition.

Because evidential alcohol test devices such as the Alco-Sensor IV and Alco-Sensor FST give numerical results, the operator and program administrators must be able to interpret the numerical test results to know what action might be necessary.

The sweat patch consists of an absorbent pad held in place by a strong adhesive film. If a person uses drugs while wearing the patch a small amount of the drug and drug metabolites is excreted in the sweat.

When implementing zero-tolerance alcohol testing policy a common tendency is to classify any alcohol test result greater than 0.000 as a positive test.

In general, women become more intoxicated than do men after drinking the same amount of alcohol, even when differences in body weight are taken into account.

It depends on how much the person had to drink, and how long ago they had their last drink.

In general, the window of detection in saliva is shorter than testing any other medium. The presence of drugs in saliva is more likely to indicate current intoxication from the drug, especially for marijuana. Sweat and hair offer longer look-back windows, as both of these testing methods continuously monitor an individual’s drug use. The following table gives estimates for the window of detection for the most commonly abused drugs.

While no one can guarantee 100% success in court, a company that follows all the elements of evidential-quality alcohol testing has a high probability of successfully defending their testing.

It’s not unusual for us to hear from customers new to drug testing who think a “negative” drug test means that a specimen contains zero drugs. In fact, a negative drug screen does not necessarily mean zero amount of the drug in the specimen.