Nicotine Blood Test – When Do You Use One?

Pass your Nicotine Blood TestNicotine blood tests are a failsafe method to determine whether someone is a smoker. Some professions, such as people working at gas stations, are not allowed to smoke, and it is often required that such employees undergo regular nicotine blood tests.

Many insurance companies make use of different nicotine tests to find out whether potential policy holders are smokers, before they review the a policy. Immunoassay technology is used in the nicotine blood test and this test can detect continine in the saliva and urine. 

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So how is nicotine testing important? The liver of a human being can break down about 80% of the nicotine into nicotine metabolites. The chief nicotine metabolite is continine and this will be present in the urine. When you smoke, the continine will be present in your body for a period of up to two weeks. The urine of the smoker will therefore contain this metabolite. The American Lung Cancer Association has reported that nicotine will not be present in the urine and blood after three days of smoking the last cigarette. This is probably the main reason why you will find that most of the nicotine blood test kits will look for continine in the body and not nicotine.

There are different kinds of nicotine blood test kits that you can buy such as COT, TobacAlert and NicAlert. These kits are quite simple to use and you do not require any complicated equipment for this purpose. These are many reasons why people make use of nicotine blood test kits, such as:

  • Many studies by researchers have reported that more than four million people under the age of eighteen years of age make use of cigarettes. If you want to know whether or not your kids smoke then you can easily buy any one of the nicotine blood test kits that are available in the pharmacy and find out the answer.
  • There are many middle schools and high schools that also make use of these nicotine blood test kits to find out whether their students are smoking or not.
  • If there is someone in your home who smokes then you can find out about the degree of passive smoking that you or other people in your family are exposed to by using these nicotine blood test kits.
  • The smoking status of the policy holders are determined by making use of the nicotine blood test kits. Many insurance companies make use of these tests to determine the premium of the policy holders.
  • Certain professions, such as gas station workers and people working in proximity to highly flammable compounds, cannot allow employees to smoke, as it poses unacceptable risks to all involved.

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