C.R. England, Salt Lake City, announced it is going to start using hair samples for pre-employment drug screening.

"The industry-wide impact of being able to conduct a pre-employment drug test that reviews a longer screening history is a tremendous improvement over the current federally mandated requirements," said Dustin England, vice president of safety and compliance for C.R. England. "With hair testing, we are able to detect months of time rather than the handful of days checked with standard urine tests. We found our hair testing positive rate was over three times higher than the required DOT urine test alone."

During the trial. conducted with Omega Laboratories, a drug testing facility, both urine and hair samples were collected. After a year of research, the management team at C.R. England became convinced that hair testing was a superior method for pre-employment drug screening and offered a much more effective screening process than urine testing.

Out of 2,000 candidates, over 150 tested positive that would have otherwise passed the current federally-mandated testing. In total, over 11 percent tested positive with hair resting, versus 2.8 percent testing positive with DOT urine testing.

England will continue to conduct standard urine drug testing for all applicants as required by the DOT.