04-13-2005, 12:10 AM
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Confirmed User
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: ICQ: 251425 Fr/Au/Ca
Posts: 6,863
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by MrC
And thats a urban myth, Total bullshit, If it does show up you have to eat so many poppy seeds it would make you sick.
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Wrong.
MythBusters did a controlled experiment on this-
One guy ate a poppy seed cake, one ate a bagel with a poppy seed.
Both showed false positives for 72 hours afterwards.
From the website
Myth: Poppy Seed Drug Test
If you eat a poppy seed bagel or poppy seed cake in the morning you will test positive for opiates on a drug screen.
The Experts:
Heather Joseph-Witham, folklorist, this is not usually told in story form, just as an unsubstantiated rumor. It plays on the fact that we are all afraid of random drug testing, and we may be against it, but we all want our pilots to be clean.
Larry Dougherty, private investigator, this is a very alive debate, as many people say you will test positive as those who say you won?t. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Florida in 1997 where he covered a story about a woman who successfully sued after an employer withdrew a lucrative job offer after she ate two bagels the morning of the interview. The woman was awarded $859,000.
Dr. Kent Holtorf, author of ?Ur-ine Trouble,? the screening urine tests are an amino assay test that works by having antibodies directed at the compound it is looking for. In the case of the opiate test they are looking for codeine and morphine in urine, the two substances that heroin is broken down into. Poppy seeds have codeine and morphine in them, they are the heroin poppy seeds, but the seeds have a very low concentration so there are no physical or mental effects. He explains that a false positive is when a drug test comes back positive when an illicit drug was not taken. One study showed as much as a 50% false-positive rate for these tests, and another study showed that a person can test positive for up to 72 hours after eating a poppy seed bagel.
Quotable Moments:
Adam: ?This is going to cure me of my love for poppy seed cake once and for all.?
Action/Results: Opiate drug tests are ordered through the Internet. The only other supplies needed were containers for urine and bagels and poppy seed cake. To make sure the tests are working and that there are no interferences with other foods, both Adam and Jamie take the test before eating anything with poppy seeds. Both tests turn out negative. A coin flip is used to determine who gets to eat what, Jamie gets the bagels and Adam gets the cake. To determine if there is a specific dosage needed, Adam will eat a large amount of poppy seeds, the entire 2,600-calorie loaf, and Jamie will eat a normal amount, three bagels. The tests are administered at a half hour, one hour, two hours, four hours, eight hours and 18 hours after beginning to eat the seeds. Adam tests positive after a half hour, but it takes two hours before Jamie tests positive. The next morning they finally test negative again, 18 hours later.
Adam decides to get to the bottom of this and calls several drug test companies to see if the tests are sensitive enough to read poppy seeds and they all pretend to have never even heard of this myth. When Adam confronts them about the possibility of a false positive and that he wants confirmation they won?t allow a ?sample? to be shipped to them to test for a false positive. Adam finally gets answers when he calls a company in Europe that confirmed that the test can detect 300 to 1,200 nanograms (that?s one-billionth of a gram) of codeine. Myth Confirmed. |
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