Fire Dept. Blood Testing

[PFunk118]

For a pre-hire blood screening for a Fire Dept. is it necessary to stop a high protein diet and abstain from taking supplements such as creatine and tribulus? I eat over 400 grams of protein a day. I know that my mercury levels would probably be high as well because I eat a lot of tuna. Would this prevent me from getting hired? Thank you in advance!

[g0dsend]

It shouldnt. As long as you dont have steroids in your system or rec drugs, you should be fine. Having high protein in your system in my opinion is a plus, cause they know that you want to build muscle.

[xXDevilDogXx]

It will not affect your test.

[Red Ketchup]

I guess it depends on the dept. Here they only test for rec drugs. Its pretty obvious that half the kids coming out of the academy are juiced to the gills.

If you really want the job badly enough, you may want to go in clean for the bloodwork just in case.

Red

[QBERT]

Have a buddy in the fire service. Drug tested once for pre-screening hire and then after that just annual physicals. Play it safe and if it is that important to you stay clean for your test. To my knowledge they only test for recreational and if you use recreational you have no business in the fire service imho.

[Mr Tick]

I just went through that testing. I am in rookie school now. They look at your normal stuff. Like cholesterol and stuff like that. I know they look at the creatine level as well. As far as the mercury i dont think so because i dident see it on my blood pannel. Nothing was said about anything other then my
cholesterol level and they said it was 105 witch was really good.

Not to take ur thread but i know my department does random urine tests for all personnel. They say that they test for all the rec drugs alcohol and steroids. They tell you the levels of all the rec drugs and the alcohol level as well. It says that the cutoff level for the Screen is 50.00 ng/ml and for the Cutoff level for confirmation is 15.00 for MJ. For alcohol it is .04% BAL for both. But it does not have any cutoff level for steroids. Whats yalls take on this. Yall think they list it but dont test for it. Or how would the levels be tested on this?



Thanks guys.

[nancy_axel]

This is one of those cases where the ethics of steroid use is greyed. You have to do what you have to do in order to save lives. Putting on a few pounds the smart & easy (relatively speaking) way will give you the ability to be a more effective fire fighter.

[nancy_axel]

I don't know why they would do a steroid test .. sounds like they are shooting themselves in the foot.