Ask X3What does 49 CFR 40.151 (What are MROs prohibited from doing as part of the verification process?) require?
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As an Ask X3 fleet-compliance assistant, I can inform you that according to 49 CFR 40.151, Medical Review Officers (MROs) are prohibited from doing the following during the verification process:
* Using non-compliant tests: You must not consider any evidence or results from drug tests that were not collected or tested according to part 40 rules (such as an employee providing a specimen to their own physician).
* Resolving collection-site disputes: You cannot decide factual disputes between an employee and a collector regarding collection-site events that are not recorded on the CCF (such as claims that a collector left the area or left containers accessible).
* Judging test justification: You cannot determine whether the employer had proper grounds to require a test, such as whether an employee was wrongly selected for a random test or ordered to take a reasonable suspicion or post-accident test without proper grounds.
* Accepting non-medical excuses for positives: You cannot accept explanations of confirmed positive, adulterated, or substituted results that do not constitute a legitimate medical explanation. This includes stories about unknowing or passive ingestion (such as someone slipping drugs into a drink, eating a marijuana brownie, or riding in a car with people smoking crack).
* Accepting Schedule I drug recommendations: You must not verify a test as negative based on a physician's recommendation to use a Schedule I drug, including state-authorized "medical marijuana."
* Accepting hemp, non-prescription marijuana, or coca tea use: You must not accept the use of hemp, non-prescription marijuana-related products, or coca teas as a legitimate medical explanation to verify a marijuana or cocaine test as negative.
* Accepting medical explanations for certain drugs: You must not accept any assertion of a legitimate medical explanation for the presence of PCP, 6-AM, MDMA, or MDA in a specimen.
* Accepting physiological excuses for adulteration: You cannot accept claims that soap, bleach, or glutaraldehyde entered a specimen through physiological means, as there are no such physiological ways for these substances to enter a specimen.
* Accepting physiological excuses for substitution: You cannot accept claims that an employee can physiologically produce a urine specimen with a creatinine level below the laboratory's limit of detection.