Happy New Year!

As the New Year is upon us, we at AADT are excited about the direction that we are going for 2008 with our nationwide expansion and client website access with new productive options soon to be launched. We have had many inquires from anxious clients and would like to thank everyone for your patience, if any of you have been involved in software programming and website designing from the beginning you probably understand it is a long process and requires a user friendly design and than extensive testing, re-testing and finally reliable security features.

AADT staff would like to extend our sincere appreciation to those client’s that have renewed for 2008 and once again entrusted us with the administration of their random testing program(s). For those that have moved on to another profession or choose to retire earlier than originally anticipated due to the slowing economy, we wish you well.

Random Testing Update –
All Testing Must be Completed
by the End of the Calendar Year!

I would like to clarify the random testing requirements set by the DOT FMCSA administrator and AADT’s obligations due to these requirements. The annual percentage rate for those mandated under the requirements of 49 CFR Parts 40 and 382 are a minimum of 50% for drugs and 10% for alcohol. The owner-operator operating non-leased, under their own authority is considered both the employer and the driver for drug and alcohol testing purposes.

The selection of drivers for random alcohol and controlled substances testing shall be made by a scientifically valid method, such as a random number table or a computer-based random number generator that is matched with drivers’ Social Security numbers, payroll identification numbers, or other comparable identifying numbers.

Each driver selected for random alcohol and controlled substances testing under the selection process used, shall have an equal chance of being tested each time selections are made.

Each driver selected for testing shall be tested during the selection period. To calculate the total number of covered drivers’ eligible for random testing throughout the year, as an employer, you must add the total number of covered drivers eligible for testing during each random testing period for the year and divide that total by the number of random testing periods. Covered employees, and only covered employees are to be in an employer’s random testing pool, and all covered drivers must be in the random pool. If you are an employer conducting random testing more often than once per month ( e.g., daily, weekly, bi-weekly) you do not need to compute this total number of covered drivers rate more than on a once per month basis.

As an employer, you may use a service agent (e.g., a C/TPA) to perform random selections for you, and your covered drivers may be part of a larger random testing pool of covered employees. However, you must ensure that the service agent you use is testing at the appropriate percentage established for your industry and that only covered employees are in the random testing pool.

Each employer shall ensure that random alcohol and controlled substances tests conducted under this part are unannounced.

Each employer shall ensure that the dates for administering random alcohol and controlled substances tests conducted under this part are spread reasonably throughout the calendar year.

Each employer shall require that each driver who is notified of selection for random alcohol and/or controlled substances testing proceeds to the test site immediately; provided, however, that if the driver is performing a safety-sensitive function, other than driving a commercial motor vehicle, at the time of notification, the employer shall instead ensure that the driver ceases to perform the safety-sensitive function and proceeds to the testing site as soon as possible.

A driver shall only be tested for alcohol while the driver is performing safety-sensitive functions, just before the driver is to perform safety-sensitive functions, or just after the driver has ceased performing such functions.

So what does all of this mean?

If the requirements for the annual minimum testing percentages are not met by the consortium, not only is the consortium in violation of the requirements, but everyone that is in that testing pool is also in violation of compliance. So as a consortium to ensure we meet that minimum testing percentage, we have to continue to generate random notices until that percentage is met prior to the end of the year.

Therefore, it is extremely important that once a donor is selected all random testing must be completed in a timely manner, within the testing selection period and absolutely before the end of each year. Any testing completed after the new year cannot be factored into the annual total of tests completed.

AADT Story Of The Month

The Common Cold:
Is it Fact or Fiction?

Common Colds Are Not Caused
By Going Outside Without A Coat
Sorry Mom. Although you meant well, the only way to catch a cold or flu is by picking up a virus. Going out into the cold without a jacket or a hat, or with wet hair, does nothing to facilitate transmission but may attribute to weaken the immune system. It’s true, though, that we are more prone in the winter. Viruses are more easily shared when people are clustered together indoors.

Flu Vaccines Do Not Cause Flu
The Centers for Disease and Prevention are emphatic that you cannot get the flu from a flu shot. The vaccine is made from killed or “inactivated” viruses, which can’t be transmitted. However, you may experience a few side effects which mimic the disease such as aches and a low-grade fever.

Feed A Cold, Starve A Fever?
Actually feed them both. This bit of armchair advice is probably repeated as often as it is jumbled. But you wouldn’t want to starve either virus: At higher temperatures the body produces more interferon, a protein that helps prevent virus reproduction. “The body is like a furnace, and to create heat you need calories,” says Dr. George Wootan, a family physician and author of Take Care of Your Child’s Health. “When people have chills it is because they don’t have enough calories to bring up the heat normally …by feeding them, they will have enough calories to raise the temperature, increase the interferon, and kill the bugs.” Wootan will sometimes recommend to patients without a temperature that they promote their own fever by getting into a hot tub or putting on warm clothes and getting under the covers (drink lots of water, too, if you’re going to try this method). “[Some] might say that you should starve a fever because you don’t want the fever to go higher,” he concludes, “but the body isn’t dumb and won’t do damage that it can’t control.”

Viruses Survive On Surfaces
You don’t have to wait to be sneezed on to catch a cold or flu. You can pick the virus up right from a counter top, keyboard, telephone or other surface. Rhinoviruses, the family of germs responsible for most colds, have been shown to survive on a surface (or “fomite,” in medical terms) for several hours or even days. “The concentration of virus attenuates; that is, the potency is less and less as time goes on. But you need very few viral particles to trigger an infection,” explains Dr. Richard Rosenfeld, professor and chairman of otolaryngology at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y. “Even if there’s just a little left and you happen to touch that doorknob or coffee cup, the virus can then survive on your hands for quite a long time. Then all it takes is a little wipe or your nose or eyes and whatever little bit of virus on there will go to town very quickly. It’s a very efficient multiplying process.”

Colds That Linger or Worsen
May Indicate Sinusitis
Barring an underlying condition or immune deficiency, most people can fight off a cold inside of 10 days. When symptoms such as congestion, headache and runny nose drag on, it may indicate a bacterial infection of the sinuses, or sinusitis “Duration of a cold beyond 10 days is highly suggestive of bacterial infection,” says Rosenfeld, who was the lead author of a new guideline for treating adult sinusitis, which addresses the importance of distinguishing a cold from sinusitis. “The other feature suggesting sinusitis is the pattern of ‘double worsening.’ That’s when someone starts to feel better and then all of a sudden they get hit again, and they’re getting worse. Now bacterial infection has superimposed itself on the viral illness. When you have prolonged illness or the double-worsening pattern, it’s reasonable to consider antibiotics.”

Vitamin C Is Ineffective For
Preventing Or Treating Cold Or Flu
A review of 30 studies on vitamin C that was updated in May 2007 put to rest a few dozen years’ of overconfidence in orange juice. “Vitamin C cannot effectively prevent or cure common colds or flu in the majority of people,” says Sari Greaves, registered dietician with New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Greaves allows that some benefit has been shown for extreme athletes exercising in extreme cold, but “since vitamin C is only known to offer a biological benefit in certain cases and in a restricted number of people, for the average adult, it’s not worth it to supplement.”

We Can Put A Man On The Moon But We Can’t Cure The Common Cold?
That is true, the problem is that there are hundreds of varieties, or serotypes, of rhinovirus in addition to other viruses that cause the common cold. Of those hundreds, just a few are causing widespread infection at any point in time. The serotypes change so rapidly that they’re impossible to keep up with. A vaccine would have to be specific to the current serotype, and by the time the virus was identified and an antidote developed, the active serotype would have changed.

Lonnie Johnson
AADT Operations Director