Federal brief
Current List of HHS-Certified Laboratories and Instrumented Initial Testing Facilities Which Meet Minimum Standards To Engage in Urine and Oral Fluid Drug Te…
HHS’s monthly list of drug-testing labs certified for federal workplace programs: 14 urine labs, one initial-testing facility, and still no oral-fluid labs. FR 2026-20004.
Federal agencies cannot send a worker’s drug test to just any lab. It has to go to one certified by the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) publishes the approved list every month.
The September 30, 2026, list shows three things. First, there are still no laboratories certified to test oral fluid (saliva) specimens, even though oral-fluid rules took effect in 2020 and were revised in 2023. Second, one Instrumented Initial Testing Facility is certified for urine: Dynacare in Edmonton, Alberta. Third, 14 laboratories are certified for urine drug testing.
The urine labs are spread across states including Louisiana, Kansas, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Texas, North Carolina, Minnesota and California, plus one in Ontario, Canada. Two are limited: a Veterans Affairs lab in Minneapolis tests VA employees only, and a U.S. Army lab at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, tests Department of War employees only.
Getting on the list is not easy. A lab must pass three rounds of performance testing and an on-site inspection, then keep passing quarterly tests and periodic inspections. Labs still applying do not count. The Transportation Department does not allow initial testing facilities to test DOT-regulated specimens.
The current list is posted at https://www.samhsa.gov/workplace/drug-testing-resources/certified-lab-list. Questions go to Anastasia Flanagan, SAMHSA Division of Workplace Programs, at 240-276-2600.
Federal Register filing: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/30/2026-20004/current-list-of-hhs-certified-laboratories-and-instrumented-initial-testing-facilities-which-meet
This is a Notice Nearby publisher-desk Federal brief — a short in-house summary of a public federal filing. It is not official agency minutes, not a newspaper story, and not Legal Publication. It does not satisfy a statutory notice requirement.
Source: the official public federal record 2026-20004 · Federal Register · 2026-20004 · 2026-20004.
This is a Notice Nearby publisher-desk Federal brief — a short in-house summary of a public federal filing. It is not official agency minutes, not a newspaper story, and not Legal Publication. It does not satisfy a statutory notice requirement.