Susan Horton had been a stay-at-home mom for almost 20 years, and now—pregnant with her fifth child—she felt a hard-won confidence in herself as a mother.
Then she ate a salad from Costco.
Horton didn’t realize that she would be drug-tested before her child’s birth. Or that the poppy seeds in her salad could trigger a positive result on a urine drug screen, the quick test that hospitals often use to check pregnant patients for illicit drugs. Many common foods and medications—from antacids to blood pressure and cold medicines—can prompt erroneous results.
If Horton had been tested under different circumstances—for example, if she was a government employee and required to be tested as part of her job—she would have been entitled to a more advanced test and to a review from a specially trained doctor to confirm the initial result.
For all those here saying that it can’t happen, here’s some info that says it can.
Poppy Seed Consumption May Be Associated with Codeine-Only Urine Drug Test Results
US Dept of Defense: Service Members Should Avoid Foods With Poppy Seeds
Urinary concentrations of morphine and codeine after consumption of poppy seeds
Consumption of seasoning containing poppy seeds can cause codeine positive urine drug test results for pain management monitoring
Pastry precautions: Poppy seed-containing products cause significant positive results in urine drug tests
Opioid exposure associated with poppy (seed) consumption reported to poison control centers and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Poppy Seeds Signal Limitations of Urine Drug Testing Protocols
Urine thebaine determination by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry after poppy seed consumption
There was even a Mythbuster episode where they confirmed it. IIRC, their test popped reliably after two bagels.
Yeah it was a good episode. They were blown away.
The last thing I saw about this very topic had mentioned that most newer tests did not have this false positive issue, but many older tests did.
More reliable tests cost more money and the hospitals won’t pay for it (often, anyway).
You’d think they’d opt for it after the cheaper test popped positive before people lost their jobs or children.
They can just do a definitive test before reporting, that would solve all of this.
Isn’t that what I said?
You’d think they’d just pass the cost of the better test on at an 8000% markup like they do with everything else.
Sorry we took your new born away, but ya know, we just can’t afford a better test.
I remember myth busters testing this
Also that Seinfeld episode.