The motorman driving the SEPTA train that derailed Wednesday had used cocaine before the accident, laboratory tests show.
Two different labs screened the motorman's urine, and the tests came back positive both for raw cocaine and for its byproducts in the body, called metabolites, said Dr. John Lauber of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Lauber said the NTSB believes there is also "an indication of past discipline" of the motorman - who was not named - for drug use.
Officials of SEPTA and the Transport Workers Union Local 234, which represents the motorman, declined to comment on any past drug use.
Lauber said the tests were on urine collected from the motorman within three hours of the train crash.
Asked whether there are any federal standards for measuring cocaine intoxication, Lauber said, "Zero is the only acceptable level."
Toxicologists contacted by the Daily News to help interpret the results said it is difficult if not impossible to determine from the urine cocaine levels how impaired his performance might have been.
They said only results from blood tests will give that information. "Urine tests really just say positive or negative, and not much about how the person is affected, because someone can just drink a lot of water and the urine will be more dilute, or less and it will be less dilute," said Dr. Peter Bryson, a nationally-known Denver toxicology expert.
Blood tests were performed, but results were not released.
Dr. Fred Henretig, medical director of the Delaware Valley Regional Poison Control Center, said some things can be said about the cocaine and cocaine metabolite levels present, however.
They are "very high," and the ratio of cocaine to its metabolites indicates the cocaine use was most likely within 10 hours or less of the urine collection, Henretig said.
But he stressed that without knowing whether one is a chronic user with a tolerance to the drug, or knowing when the drugs were ingested, it is impossible to speculate on how impaired the motorman was.
"A larger dose taken a longer time ago, and a smaller dose taken closer to testing give about the same test result numbers, but the psychological effects are totally different," he said.
SEPTA General Manager Louis Gambaccini called the drugs "a horrifying problem."
"In the transportation industry, the use of drugs cannot be tolerated," he said.
SEPTA's drug testing program is one of the strongest and most comprehensive in the nation, he added, saying SEPTA officials believe that only one other major urban transit authority - Houston - has won the right to do random drug testing on its employees.
The TWU agreed to the random drug testing program in contract negotiations last March. Since then, 2.32 percent of the nearly 1,000 SEPTA employees tested at random sampled positive for illegal drug use, Gambaccini said.
"In every case, immediate and appropriate action was taken," he said.
In addition, top SEPTA officials said more than 25 other employees have turned themselves in for voluntary drug rehabilitation since the program began.
While SEPTA officials declined comment on the motorman's test, they did outline SEPTA's standard drug testing policies: The company may demand an employee be tested after an accident. If the authority determines the employee's drug use was a cause, the employee can be discharged.
The motorman involved in the train crash, hired in 1974, will be suspended without pay as of Monday morning, pending the outcome of the investigation, SEPTA officials said.
