Qualifying the Results

A recent article in The Horse.com notes one of the problems with current drug testing conducted at race tracks. The tests are so sensitive that they often detect levels of drugs that are present in the race trace environment, not necessarily in the horses being tested.

Case in point. Dr. Steven A. Barker, a distinguished professor of veterinary medicine at Louisiana State University's School of Veterinary Medicine, collected samples at four Louisiana tracks from soil in stalls, on stall surfaces, barn dust and lagoon waters on the backstretches. Using standard testing procedure, researchers examined these samples for such drugs as amphetamines, barbiturates and non steroidal anti-inflammatory agents. According to Barker, "Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, including phenylbutazone, flunisin and naproxen were identified in all of the the tested samples with the highest concentrations found in the samples collected from the stall floors."

Which leads one to believe that every horse is being treated with these chemical agents or that the humans caring for them are unknowingly jeopardizing their horses' test results. Consider that the second most common contaminant in stall soil was caffeine and you get the picture. Trace amounts of coffee either spilled or dribbled from coffee cups is most likely the culprit in this case.

Barker is not ruling out the possibility that drug use is as wide-spread as his soil test results indicate, but he is also not ready to rule out environmental factors. "While we have yet to examine the degree to which environmental contamination contributes to positive test results in racehorses, it is certainly possible that environmental contamination is occurring," he notes. The fact that one type of contamination is indistinguishable from the other just complicates the findings.

Clearly the sensitivity of the drug tests is critical to being able to detect the presence of multiple types of chemical substances, but until a test can be developed that empirically ties the presence of drugs to the specific horse, not its environment, there will always be "wiggle room" to dispute the findings.

And that, of course, takes money, something which the hard-hit horse industry seems to be lacking these days.