My friend had a random UA at work. She didnt’ know about it before hand. She weighs about 123 lbs, 5’3" works out regularly. Doesn’t do any drugs but does drink alcohol. She drinks about 80 ounces of water per day because she rides her bicycle to work and most of it is drank before noon. They told her that the UA was too diluted to test. They gave her another UA, this time an ETG/10 panel. She had already drank 20 ounces of coffee, 30 ounces of diet pop and 32 ounces of water. She had gone to the bathroom 4 times that morning already too. She is worried it will come back diluted again. She had also drank the night before and though drinking isn’t against policy she wondered why the ETG test.
We’ve searched the internet and all the diluted stuff we found all said she would have been trying to cover for something but she didn’t know about either UA and doesn’t have anything to hide. Any information is well appreciated.
I’m assuming that UA is urinalysis and this friend is having to do a drug screen as part of their employment. If this is correct, then ‘dilute’ is based on the performance of whatever assay is being used. This would typically be determined by the manufacturer and/or the lab performing the testing and varies between test brands and/or labs. So, there’s no good answer for your question without knowing what specific brand of test is being used and where it is being performed.
Yes it was a urinalysis and would be sent off to a lab. UA is an abbreviation for urinalysis. Her original test was on July 1 and they didn’t give her the results until July 6. Her first test was a basic 8 panel drug test. The ETG/10 panel tests for the 8 main drugs then 2 more and I think the ETG is for alcohol.
If you’re deliberately trying to dilute your UA sample by drinking lots of water, are there certain vitamins, etc, that you should take so it won’t be flagged as diluted?
While it’s great your friend is keeping so well hydrated the amount of fluid she is consuming is resulting in urine so dilute that many drug tests won’t work on it. Since “flushing” the body with excessive fluid is a trick used by many drug addicts to evade getting caught this will look suspicious in drug testing. Since they don’t know her the presumption will be that she is hiding something, not that she is consuming vast quantities of fluid as part of her work out routine.
If she is subjected to random drug testing she may want to cut back a little bit on the fluids to avoid this problem in the future. If her urine really is that dilute then she’s already consuming more fluid than she needs to and her kidneys are just dumping the excess. It’s not hurting her - it’s just not necessary.
Unless she is really, really that thirsty all the time, in which case she might have some sort of disorder like diabetes insipidus (which is not the same as diabetes type I and II with the high blood sugar). But that would require a doctor visit to evaluate and not an internet message board.
With the second test they may be using a more sensitive form of test that can work with diluted urine. Since that’s usually done on suspicion someone is hiding something it’s not surprising that it would test for more drugs than the usual screening. It may show that she has really dilute urine but with normal urine chemicals (just really diluted) and no sign of illicit drugs, in which case she’s (probably) off the hook. If it’s still too dilute to use, well, yes, there may be further repercussions depending on whether or not she works for jerks.
For the purposes of drug testing, one with a specific gravity of under 1.003, usually. By way of contrast, a SG of 1.030 would be fairly concentrated urine.
Your average urine drug test looks for presence or absence of drugs–i.e. it is a “qualitative” drug test. There are minimum threshold concentrations below which the test is read as negative, even if teeny tiny trace amounts of something are present. Therefore, diluting urine like crazy by excess free water intake is one means of trying to defeat a urine drug screen–it also dilutes out the concentration of drugs and drug metabolites eliminated in the urine.
The body excretes free water, resulting in very dilute urine if you drink a lot of it. There are variety of pathologic and psychologic conditions which lead to excess water drinking, but in general the average person doesn’t pee out urine with a SG of less than 1.003, so a repeat urine is requested if a sample comes in that is that dilute.
I agree that the volumes of fluid she is drinking are ludicrous. I ride my bike to work as well and I maybe drink 30-40 ounces of fluids in total in a 12hr working day, and that’s if it’s hot. In winter, maybe about three or four small cups of tea/coffee is all.