MikeD

Left you a private message

Don’t really know. Being anemic sure sounds suspicious...

Hard to say. The length of time peth stays in your body varies between a 2 and 12 day half life according to a number of reports. secondly, your actual value is very much a guess in reality. Was it dried blood spot or whole blood? While ETG is oftentimes “normalized” for creatinine values, peth is not for hematocrit values, which it should be. so applying what we do know, and considering after over 10 years or more of reasonably mainstream peth testing we still don’t even apply that... consider what we obviously don’t know, PLD and phosphatadicholine variations, and general enzymatic process intraindividual differences, and other things.. without other supporting evidence, that test means nothing. It is my belief there are LOTS of undocumented false positives. Even cases where someone did indeed drink, but a false positive emerged rather than an actual incriminating positive, making the test seem even better than originally thought. A dangerous situation, they never conceived it was capable of detecting very little drinking but now they think it can erroneously... arg

Can you give us some details?

Quite frankly no one knows for sure. I personally know pilots that were FIRED because of a positive peth test associated with incidental exposure. I know a woman to owns a monitoring company who created a false positive using hand sanitizer. there is a research paper about false positives being created with hand sanitizer. They say it can’t happen, but when it does they don’t admit the test is flawed... it’s weird. I personally think it’s a collection of pre analytical and analytical errors. Pre analytical in that the blood spots aren’t dried properly allowing fermentation, and enzymatic activity while in transport. Pre analytical in that collection is done in a non sterile environment allowing contaminants onto the filter paper. analytical in that the donors hematocrit levels aren’t recorded and used to either normalize the results, like creatinine normalization for ETG urine tests, or to properly prepare the internal reference standard for LC/MSMS

Ex addicts? Percentage wise, I saw more “counselors” relapse than patients while I was ‘in’. That and for a few thousand extra bucks, you can pay to be a novice counselor for your last month... geesh Ya, they’re a money makin racket. Mike

Oh, had four exonerating tests... meant nothing, got fired. No investigation, no interviewing the three doctors, one chief pilot or peer monitor none of whom thought I had relapsed, nothing. Mike

I saw that article... Geesh! Turns out LOTS of false positive peths for nurses. I just found a research paper claiming to have caused false positives with hand sanitizers, similar to the ETG test demise. I have two expert forensic opinions on the inefficacy of peth with two more on the way. It’s simply not reliable. Period. Ok for clinical use, with proper safeguards and interpretation, but not for forensic use. Mike

I’m looking to get in touch with nurses who have had false positive Peth tests. I’m the victim of one in a similar situation for pilots. I’ve amassed a lot of info that may help. Mike

Of course I do. And all of that goes without saying, still falls on deaf ears. I’m starting to uncover more scientific and discrete issues. Hematocrit normalization, cards not being dried as directed and not even recorded, a recent German study showing where subjects popped positive after repeated washing of hands in 70% ethanol, uh, like hand sanitizer. Shoot me an email if you don’t mind, [email protected] thanks! Mike

Hi, I am a pilot who got a false positive peth test. During my research I’ve found Nurses have an unusually high occurrence of them. I’m slowly getting quite a library of good evidence showing it’s just plain not reliable. Ill be going to an arbitration hearing soon to dispute my termination based on that peth test. So many of your stories are so similar to mine, I’d love to talk to whomever is will to, to find similarities, patterns, what ever. The short story here is: 26 June ETG/ETS negative, random test. 1 May ETG/ETS, positive at 117 ETG, negative ETS. Considered abnormal, and my creatinine was over 250. Ordered a peth. 9 May PeTH positive at 98. No drinking ever... 16 May PeTH negative at LOD 20. 16 May hair etg negative, six month coverage. 17 May PeTH negative at LOD 8. 20 June hair etg negative, 3 month coverage. And a year before and after randoms all negative. One of these things is not like the others... Mike