Is Split Sample Re-testing worth it in this case?
I used to smoke under a gram a day, but smoked almost daily. I stopped from about Feb 17th of this year for about 5 weeks. Around March 22nd I smoked again for about 2 weeks. I then stopped again for a little over 3 weeks before my test. In the meantime I did a full week natural "cleanse" (with vitamins and fiber), took Chlorella, Green Tea Extract, and exercised. I've lost almost 15 lbs (I was almost 260, 6'1" at my heaviest a couple of months ago, and now down to 245) so my metabolism is pretty good at this point.
In the past 3 weeks (21 days), I took 4-5 Walgreens home tests. On day 1 there was no line. On day 4 I had a negative line. On day 12 or so I passed again, so I even sent one of the samples to the lab (included with the home test) about 2 weeks ago and it came up negative. I proceeded to take my test this week with "HireRight", which uses Quest Labs on the 21st day. It was a simple 5 panel 50ng test, split sample, meaning they split the sample into 2 vials. They sent the test to the lab, and I got a call stating that I came up positive for THC. I'm completely devastated. This was my dream job and to make matters, worse, the lab said my concentration was 60ng! So I literally ALMOST passed, since the cutoff is 50ng. If I had smoked recently it's my understanding that I'd be in the hundreds or thousands on 'ng's.
I obviously didn't get the job and the policy of the company I was applying to is to not allow a re-test under any condition. The only option HireRight provides is to pay them $250 of my money to "re-test" the other vial from the same urine.
The only thing I did differently during the day of the test was drink a lot of water in the morning to the point where I was peeing every 30 minutes and it was totally clear. My test was mid-afternoon so I decided that maybe if I ate some food it would help add color. I went to Wendy's and had a Spicy chicken sandwich (yes seems like a stupid idea to eat something 'spicy' in hindsight), and a coke about 2.5 hours before the test. I also took (1) 200mg ibuprofen the morning BEFORE the test and I doubt that would have caused a false positive since I think you need to continually take many ibuprofen to cause a false positive.
Has anyone been down this road before? I'm trying to decide if it's worth possibly embarrassing myself further and paying $250 to have the other vial tested by another lab. I'm tempted to just do it since I passed another lab test a week or so prior and even the positive was SO close to a negative (60ng was the result, negative is less than 50ng).
Thanks for your feedback.
Is Split Sample Re-testing worth it in this case?
Ibuprofen can cause a false positive for marijuana, but if your sample was lab tested with a GS/MC you're in trouble. A GC/MS is very accurate, it call tell the difference between ibuprofen, poppy seeds, over the counter medications that could have caused false positives.
Is Split Sample Re-testing worth it in this case?
Quote:
It was a simple 5 panel 50ng test, split sample, meaning they split the sample into 2 vials. They sent the test to the lab, and I got a call stating that I came up positive for THC. I'm completely devastated. This was my dream job and to make matters, worse, the lab said my concentration was 60ng! So I literally ALMOST passed, since the cutoff is 50ng.
Since the lab gave you a quantitative value, the urine sample was sent to the GC/MS, which has a cutoff threshold of 15 ng/ml.
The simple 5 panel 50ng test is an assay used for the initial screening. Assays are a "Pass/Fail" endeavor and have no ability to yield quantitative values. Thats when the confirmation GC/MS comes into play.
As adsad pointed out, the GC/MS is highly accurate and because of its accuracy, "false-positives" are eliminated when the urine sample is run through the GC/MS. The Mass Spec (MS) would indentify the exact substance present, so any excuses about poppy seeds, OTC meds, etc; would not float.
Because of the GC/MS's accuracy and its ability to quantify, being able to mount a successful challenge to its results is virtually futile. Keep this in mind if youre planning on challenging the results of sample vial 'A' by having vial 'B' tested.
