Words Of Warning

We have detected more drug users for more companies than any hair testing lab in the world.

If an employer requires a pre-employment drug test, you can assume that the company wants to hire drug-free candidates. If they require random testing of employees you can assume they are serious about eliminating the higher costs and risks to their business that typically come with drug use.  A Psychemedics drug test using hair analysis detects more drugs than any other test. It can detect 6-10X more drugs than a urine test and 2-3X more than other hair tests.

With a drug test using urine, there is safety in numbers. The detection rate is low, and the drugs can only be detected for a few days after use. You might literally get lost in the crowd of people tested. Not with Psychemedics. We detect drugs used months ago rather than a few days back, and our technology misses virtually nothing.

If a company uses the Psychemedics hair test for drugs, they are serious about identifying all high risk applicants or employees.

The first thing to understand is that companies that test with hair are generally looking for lifestyle users. Those are the habitual users who present the highest risks in the workplace. And companies that test using Psychemedics are committed to keeping those kinds of users out of their organizations and away from their workplaces.

So why is hair testing their choice?

When you take drugs, they are metabolized by the organs in your body and then excreted, usually in urine and usually within just a few days. That is why a drug test using urine is ineffective at identifying people who are chronic or habitual drug users. By the time a test is administered—especially if a user prepares for it—most of the drugs have been processed by the body and eliminated as the body flushes itself out. Urine is ineffective at detecting usage except in the very recent past.

A hair test is different.

As drugs are processed by the body trace amounts pass from the blood into a hair follicle. Then as hair grows from the follicle those trace amounts are carried inside the hair shaft. Unlike urine, it remains part of the body. Since it is being carried by the hair as it grows, it establishes a chronological record of drug use. It takes about 30 days for hair to grow one-half inch. A sample of hair just 1.5 inches long and as big around as a pencil lead gives us a 90-day picture of drug usage. And reveals two important things a habitual drug user would rather we not know.

• Which drugs were ingested in which amounts
• How often they were ingested over a period of time

Our science enables us to take collected hair samples, analyze them and generate reports on drug usage back 90-days. And that is why a Psychemedics hair test for drugs is so valuable to employers.