Note: Pre-employ.com offers paperless urine based drug testing programs for employers nationwide. Call us at 1-800-300-1821 ext 124 if you have questions or for a free quote.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Transportation issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to amend certain provisions of its drug testing procedures dealing with laboratory testing of urine specimens.

According to the NPRM, some of the proposed changes will also affect the roles and standards applying to collectors and medical review officers. The proposed changes are intended to create consistency with new requirements established by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Mandatory Guidelines.

The NPRM is designed to align DOT’s regulated-industry drug testing with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) laboratory drug testing requirements.

The comment period lasts for 60 days from the date of publication.

DOT is required by the Omnibus Transportation Employees Testing Act to follow the HHS requirements for the testing procedures/protocols and drugs for which it tests.

Primary laboratory proposals include:

• Testing for MDMA (aka, ecstasy)

• Lowering cutoff levels for cocaine and amphetamines

• Conducting mandatory initial testing for heroin, and

• Authorizing employers to use HHS-Certified Instrumented Initial Test Facilities to conduct initial drug testing.

DOT also proposes bringing a number of its testing definitions in-line with those of HHS.

*We welcome relevant comments and questions from consumers, experts, and human resources professionals. Please do not submit comments with advertisements as they will not be posted publicly. Thanks for visiting our blog!