

Imagine this: You take a drug test. Six months later, the lab gets back to you and says that your urine contains trace amounts of a club and date rape drug even though you prefer to spend weekends with your Xbox.

This would be no surprise to scientists at the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, who discovered that urine samples, kept in a refrigerator for six months, spontaneously produce significant amounts of the drug GHB or other chemicals that can result in a false positive result from the most stringent test used by forensic labs. This could cause all sorts of innocent people to test positive for exposure to the illicit substance.

The drug, sometimes called liquid ecstasy, is made from gamma butyrolactone, a solvent used to degrease engine parts or clear plugged drains. Liquid E has become a popular rave drug. It is also favored by rapists as a means to knock people out before sexually assaulting them. It is colorless and odorless, which makes it easy to slip into an unsuspecting victim's drink.

To summarize, the results of our study suggests in vitro production of GHB may increase the apparent GHB concentrations in urine during storage. To minimize this production, it is suggested that urine specimens be maintained in a refrigerated or frozen condition and analyzed as quickly as possible. This is particularly important, because GHB analyses are relatively infrequent requests in many laboratories. Therefore, specimens are likely to be stored for some extended period of time before the analysis is carried out.

The scientists published their findings in the July issue of the journal Forensic Science International. Their paper did not explain how the urine produces the illegal drug, but it cautioned forensic scientists to test urine samples quickly in order to avoid inaccurate results.

To prove that GHB is spontaneously produced in urine, the scientists collected urine specimens from 31 people that claim to have never used the drug. They tested each of the urine samples after seven days, 60 days, and 189 days with a machine called a gas chromatography mass spectrometer. Those instruments are the workhorses of forensic labs because they can be used to identify and determine the amount of many different drugs and poisons in blood, urine, and other bodily fluids. In most of the samples, there was a dramatic increase in the amount of GHB after six months of storage in a refrigerator.

Several months ago, the owner of a natural soap company showed that a common field test kit used by police to identify GHB can be set off by his products. David Bronner released a video of his flagship product, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, creating false positive results in a NarcoPouch 928 test kit. This seriously called into question the reliability of those tests. The test that was shown to be misleading by the FBI scientists is considered to be the trustworthy backup of the flawed field test kit.