Four Million Drugged Workers?

February 26, 2013 No Comments

An executive from a small drug testing operation addressing a group of human resources professionals told them (and me) that more than three-quarters of all workplace injuries are due to drug use. Now remember, 5.2 million workers in the United States suffer occupational injuries or illnesses annually.  I can’t fathom that over 4 million people get hurt in the workplace each year because they are drugged or drunk.

Other “facts” circulate about substance abuse at work.  A safety person at a large glass plant told me “A lady gave us a seminar at the plant and stated that something like 80% of all accidents are drug or alcohol related.”

If the post-injury testing results are accurate, why do we need OSHA?  Safety and health specialists?  It’s pretty obvious all we need to do is eliminate the influence of drugs and alcohol in the workplace and our injuries drop by 80%!  Let me be very clear.  I want sober people working where I work.  But I also have fundamental belief in the goodness of the American worker.  I’ll grant that some stray off the path and pay the consequences through injury, but not 4 million!

So what’s the real picture?

A steady decline

The most comprehensive report on workplace drug testing results comes from a major drug testing organization.  Quest Diagnostics performed 6.3 million tests for clients in 2011 and found that the drug positivity rate for the combined U.S. workforce stood at an all-time low of 4.6%.  By comparison, the combined rate for all causes in 1988 was 13.6% and has been in steady decline ever since.

According to Quest, the post-accident positivity rate for the general workforce was 6.0%.  In safety-sensitive jobs, the post-accident positivity rate was substantially lower at 3.6%.

In the grand picture of root causes, it seems clear that drugs and alcohol are small players.

If you remain convinced that drugs and alcohol heavily influence your workplace injury problems, think about the many organizations that have gone for millions of work hours without a workplace injury.  Or consider the 1,000 workplaces participating in the OSHA Voluntary Protection Program with incident rates far below their industry average. It’s quite likely they’ll tell you they got to safety excellence by creating a very positive workplace culture, not by threatening drug and alcohol tests.

We have a federal law that mandates drug testing for safety-sensitive jobs. That’s a given.  And yes, we do have drug and alcohol users showing up at work unfit for duty—but in smaller numbers than commonly assumed.

“Upstream” testing

If it’s fairness we want, perhaps we need to test more widely. In a mini-survey I conducted, I asked respondents if they also tested coworkers and the injured party’s supervisor following an incident. In one of the dozen responses, the company has the option of testing a contributor.  All the rest don’t even consider testing others.  Given the teachings of root cause analysis and our understanding of the role of the system and culture in incident causation, I’d ask “why not?”

Consider this example. A fork truck operator strikes a column. If you have a policy on post-injury testing, you certainly test the driver.  Would you also test the engineer who laid out the narrow aisle? Perhaps you’d want to test the supervisor who assigned the driver to the third day of heavy overtime when he was already exhausted.  How about testing the maintenance supervisor who allowed the scratched and dirty mast guard to remain on the truck blocking clear vision.  While we’re at it, let’s test the manager who downsized the shipping department to the point where pressure to move product was extreme.

You get the point.  All these people are involved in one way or another with the incident.  If our practice is to determine if drugs or alcohol contributed to the incident, we should test them all!

It’s time to take a long hard look at post-injury drug testing.  Does it make sense to tell 94% (or 98% or 100%) of the people who have workplace incidents that we don’t trust them?

Trust in the workplace is at an all-time low.  Why drive it lower on the rare chance we actually find out something we don’t already know about an employee.  If we’ve got the positive and supportive culture we all know we need, then we should know long before an incident that a team member has a problem.  A very positive workplace culture will lead to safety excellence more than threatening drug and alcohol tests.

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This article was written by Lawrence H. “Chip” Dawson.  Chip is a safety management consultant in Rochester, NY. Retired from Eastman Kodak, where he was director of industrial safety at Kodak’s primary plant, Chip holds a B.A. from Oklahoma State University and did graduate work in management at the University of Illinois. He is a Commander, USNR (Retired) and a professional member of the American Society of Safety Engineers.  This article was originally published in Industrial Safety & Hygiene News ( www.ishn.com ). 

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