a prerequisite for employment, and to keep the workplace drug free, many government agencies, and private corporations, spend millions of dollars, each year, in order to test new, and current employees, for signs of cocaine usage.My dad, Gregory Brulz SR., is a Technical Service Representative, employed by Roche Diagnostics Corporation. Roche is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical manufacturers, and supplier of biomedical testing instrumentation, to many of the clinical laboratories, and hospitals, that perform drug testing. Aside from testing prospective employees for casual cocaine use, these laboratories also perform clinical testing, to aid in the treatment of cocaine addicts, and abusers.My dad's job is to set up the test instrument operating parameters, perform testing to ensure that the instrument, and tests, meet federal (FDA), and laboratory regulatory guidelines, and train the instrument operators.On most diagnostic analyzers, human urine is the medium tested, in determining the quantity of cocaine present in a human body. The concentration of cocaine present in the urine, can also be used to interpret the frequency of usage by the individual, and assist in the clinical treatment process.On the analyzer, the urine is mixed with chemical aggregates, called "reagents." A high intensity light is projected through a clear plastic cup, containing the urine- chemical mixture. When the mixture contains the drug in question, the reaction created by the drug-chemical reaction "absorbs" the amount of light projected through the mixture, in proportion to the amount of drug present. The quantity of light " absorbed' is converted to a specific concentration, presented in nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) of urine. The presence of cocaine is considered negative up to 300 ng/ml (Roche 22). These analyzers can process several hundred individual urine samples per hour. Even at this rate, many laboratories strain to keep up wi...
