If there is no line that indicates how much urine needs to be in the cup, fill the cup about halfway. Check the temperature strip on the collection cup to confirm that the sample falls within 90–100 °F (32–38 °C). If the urine sample appears completely clear, it could be diluted with water. Ask the subject to provide another sample.
If the kit you have has a panel attached to the inside of the cup, you don’t need to do anything except collect a sample. Make sure the panel is saturated with urine.
Don’t wait more than 10 minutes after a sample is collected or the results could be inaccurate.
Oftentimes, the control region is marked with a “C. ” If there’s a single test region, it may be marked with a “T. ” Most employment drug tests in the US are a 5-panel test, meaning they test for the 5 drugs that are required by federal employment laws. For example, a panel could have a control region at the top and regions labeled “Marijuana” or “Cocaine. ”
The color of the lines may vary depending on the testing kit that you have. The intensity of the color line is irrelevant. A faint or fading line doesn’t mean that the sample contains a small amount of the drug.
False positives do occur, so mail-in a test to be sure that a drug is present in the urine that you tested.
If the results are for the wrong person, contact the lab immediately to inform them of the error. Don’t read results that are for a different person or you could violate someone’s medical privacy.
A 5-panel drug test will include the results for the 5 drugs that were tested. A 10-panel test will include a list of the 10 drugs tested and whether or not they were detected in the sample.
The interpretation could also say that the sample was clear of any of the drugs that were tested.
The lab report may draw attention to abnormal results with an asterisk (*). If you suspect that the results were tampered with or if the lab notes that the results are inconclusive, administer the test again to be sure that the person tested positive for a drug.
