Did a search here on “Drug Test” and didn’t come up with any results on this so:
I was talking with a very literate engineer friend of mine about being employed at at nuclear facility and he stated that even if one associates, i.e just being NEXT to someone who smokes grass will be nailed and not employed.
Is this true? Do they have equipment that sophisticated? 
It is possible, but from my own personal experience I can tell you it is unlikely. Of course anything is possible, so if you are taking a test I’d avoid second hand smoke just to be on the safe side. FYI, pot tests will fail to detect anything from a light smokers system in about two weeks to a month of not using it.
Also, steer clear of the poppy seed muffins and bagels.
A certain site which sells various methods for beating drug tests (and which will therefore not be named) claims that there are no definitive studies on testing positive for second hand smoke. The same site claims that to score a positive via second hand smoke would require prolonged contact in an enclosed space, but then again, if there are no definitive studies, how the hell do they know? They must be on crack. Come to think of it…
You’ll find plenty of anecdotal evidence to the contrary, though. I know several people who have (both falsely and honestly) accused second-hand smoke of causing the positive reading.
Depending upon the expense of the test, they can be very sensitive indeed. I have personally seen several people fail a test after going several weeks without smoking dope (see? there’s that anecdotal garbage creeping in already).
According to this page:
According to that same article, THC is apparently metabolized fairly quickly, but it’s also stored in fat cells. Therefore, once you store up a fairly high level of THC, you’re constantly burning it off as it is released from fat cells, and you’re liable to be busted farther down the road.
I suspect that most of the “false positives” come from a variety of factors other than second-hand smoke. For example, it appears that one or more of the metabolites produced by THC happen to be the same or very similar to that of Ibuprofen. Most of the tests have presumably been reworked since this phenomenon was noticed in the 1980s, but the cheap ones may not.
Sample handling can also be a problem. In the late 1980s, High Times (obviously, a biased source) estimated that one out of every ten urine samples was mishandled in some fashion which may lead to either a false positive or a false negative. Mis-labeling is probably one of the factors, and lord help the office if the graphic designer’s sample pops open and spills all over the other samples on the way to testing.
And then there’s the single example I know of which I call the “bullshit positive.” (Warning: more nearly useless anecdotal evidence ahead.) A friend of mine works at a place which makes a point of hiring people with previous drug abuse history and regularly “testing” them. She had recently had surgery and informed her office that she would be failing that week’s test because of the pain medication she’d been issued. They pulled her aside a few days later and told her she also tested positive for marijuana, and would she like to talk about it? She hadn’t, but it freaked her out something awful. She also blamed, um, certain individuals, for polluting her second-hand.
One of my lawyer friends told her that if the questioning persisted, she should ask for the name of the testing company, a copy of the results, etc., etc. Wouldn’t you know it, they couldn’t produce any of that information at all. Because, it would appear, they weren’t actually testing anyone, just taking samples, tossing them, and then giving selected workers the third degree by accusing them of testing positive for drugs they suspected the worker of abusing. Or maybe just to keep them in line–who knows?
I suspect that method of testing will prove to be more expensive for that company in the long term, by the way, but that’s all I have to say about it.
That bullshit factor is the reason many people are up in arms about drug testing. In the eye of the public, so many things appear to be incriminating. In the eye of the researcher (the legitmate researcher) not so many things are incriminating.
It is the witch-hunt of the 20th century and has no signs of stopping.
As I understand it, the most sophistocated machines used are Mass Spectrometers/Gas Chromatographs. These machines will analyze a drop of your urine (or whatever, really) and tell the technicians the chemical composition of every single molecule present. It is therefore possible to detect the slightest amounts. THC (from pot) will stay in an average system for around 30 days,… longer if there is more body fat than average, so that Phish concert may haunt you for a while. The saving grace for second handers usually lies in the “threshold”. Most testing facilities will tell an employer if your levels are below the threshold which reads: ‘your prospective employee was just at a concert and most likely received it second hand’. I knew someone who this actually happened to. The funny thing was, she never used pot ever. She argued a blue streak until they let her keep her job. I on the other hand used habitually at the time and I won’t go into the methods I used to pass the test on this forum… my email is listed if someone needs help. Naturally I don’t use the stuff anymore;)
I thought the hardest test to beat was done on your hair and not your urine. While you may avoid pot smoke (either smoking it or secondhand) for a month to make your pee clean your hair is another matter and seems to keep a record back a good deal longer unless you recently got shaved bald. I do not know if merely being in proximity to pot smoke would ‘contaminate’ your hair such that you could test positive for use. Something to consider though.
The answer is a qualified no. With the standard NIDA-5 urine drug metabolite test, second-hand marijuana smoke is very unlikely to show as a positive. Now, this depends entirely on the dimensions of the second-hand contact. If one is getting shotgunned, or standing in the middle of a clambake, then it’s entirely possible that that contact would intruduce enough THC into the system to generate a positive. Note that the half-life if THC metabolites in the body, while longer than other drugs, is still rather low for one time or low-use amounts. I shouldn’t think that second hand exposure would be detectable for more than a week or two.
Now, if the test administered is the dreaded hair test, then things may work differently. I’m not an expert on the hair test, but it is reputed to be far more accurate and sensitive. And they don’t take kindly to folks shaving their bodies. However, I would doubt that rare contact with Marijuana smoke on a second-hand basis would yeild a positive result.
Now, re-reading the OP, the engineer seems as if he may be saying that if one hangs out with a marijuana user, even in the total absence of marijuana, then one may test positive. That’s absolute nonsense. The test looks for drug metabolites. Nothing to metabolize --> nothing to find. This is the sort of FUD that drug paranoid employers often generate, to attempt to dissuade employees from even associating with such unsavory characters.