About Us

THE LEADER IN HAIR TESTING

Psychemedics was established in 1987 to provide testing for drugs of abuse using hair analysis and has been successfully operating for over 25 years. Our proprietary process has been awarded seven patents for detecting drugs of abuse using hair analysis. Thousands of corporations currently rely on Psychemedics’ proprietary hair analysis technology for their pre-employment and employee drug screening. Psychemedics is headquartered in Boston and has offices in Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Our Laboratory is located in Culver City, CA. Psychemedics is a publicly-held corporation listed on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol PMD.

Over the years, Psychemedics has performed millions employment-related hair tests, not including tests used in research, quality assurance, or other internal purposes. At Psychemedics, hair testing is not a sideline or one of many clinical offerings. Psychemedics specializes in hair analysis. We pioneered and developed hair testing in the workplace.

For over 25 years, Psychemedics has also successfully defended hair test results in lawsuits, union arbitrations, and government agency hearings. Our test has been routinely upheld in employment cases, where the test results generally stand alone as proof of drug use, as opposed to family court and child custody situations where the test result is usually only part of a number of pieces of evidence.

Psychemedics’ record of innovation includes the following firsts:

  • 1st lab to develop and patent the most effective process for removing virtually 100% of the drugs from the hair (other labs attempt to leach or extract drugs from intact hair, and in so doing may leave behind or destroy much of the drug). This is perhaps the most critical area in the testing process. Ineffective release of drugs from the intact hair leads to ineffective testing and false negatives.
  • 1st lab to utilize tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) in workplace testing, and to utilize the more accurate GC/MS/MS or LC/MS/MS on positive results for marijuana, cocaine, opiates, and methamphetamine (other labs may only use MS/MS for marijuana).
  • 1st lab to develop a system of wash procedures to remove and account for external contamination, which encompasses testing of the wash solution (Psychemedics’ wash procedures are the most extensive in the industry). Studies have demonstrated that our wash procedures can distinguish between ingestion and external contamination.
  • 1st lab to test for enantiomers of methamphetamine (D & L isomer) in hair to distinguish illegal drugs from Vick’s inhaler.
  • 1st lab to develop testing of Ecstasy (MDMA) in hair.
  • 1st lab to obtain FDA clearance of hair assays for drugs of abuse, and the only lab to have clearances not limited to head hair.
  • 1st lab to receive College of American Pathologists (CAP) accreditation for drug testing including hair.

    • FDA CLEARANCE

    Psychemedics has obtained FDA clearance on all drug categories and is the only lab to have clearance not limited to head hair (including head and body hair clearances).

    Because some labs without these FDA clearance have asserted that FDA clearances are unnecessary, the FDA issued an advisory in June, 2005, that clarified the need for workplace screening tests to be cleared by the FDA. The advisory stated “When the FDA has not reviewed a test product, consumers and businesses cannot have the same assurance that the results of that test are correct as with an FDA-cleared test. Manufacturers of tests with FDA approval or clearance have provided the FDA with data to assure that their tests generate reliable results for the specimens being tested.”



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