District Of Columbia § 1-620.34 - Testing methodology.

Testing shall be performed by an outside contractor at a laboratory certified by the United States Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) to perform job-related drug and alcohol forensic testing.

For random testing of District employees, the contractor shall, at a location designated by the District to collect urine specimens on-site, split each sample and perform enzyme-multiplied-immunossay technique (“EMIT”) testing on one sample and store the split of that sample. Any positive EMIT test shall be then confirmed by the contractor, using the gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (“GCMS”) methodology.

Any District employee found to have a confirmed positive urinalysis shall be notified of the result. The employee may then authorize that the stored sample be sent to another HHS-certified laboratory of his or her choice, at his or her expense, for a confirmation, using the GCMS testing method.

Reasonable suspicion and post-accident employee testing shall follow the same procedures set forth in subsections (a) through (c) of this section. In such cases, the employee shall be escorted by a supervisor to the contractor’s test site for specimen collection or a breathalyser.

A breathalyser shall be deemed positive by the District’s testing contractor if the contractor determines that 1 milliliter of the employee’s breath (consisting of substantially alveolar air) contains .38 micrograms or more of alcohol.

Prior to testing, a physician must sit down with the employee and ask what medications he or she might have been taking to rule out any false positives in the drug screening results.