Delta Airlines Flight 573 took off from San Juan, Puerto Rico, at 4:45 p.m. Eastern time on Jan. 16, 2025, and headed for Atlanta.

At 5:49 p.m., air traffic controllers told pilots over the Caribbean that a SpaceX Starship rocket had exploded. All planes were ordered to avoid an area where the Federal Aviation Administration estimated debris would fall.

The plane turned sharply south to get out of the debris zone.

And it wasn’t alone. ProPublica identified 20 other planes that appeared to make sudden turns to exit or avoid the danger zone in the minutes after the explosion.

While none of the planes were damaged by the debris, such emergency maneuvering can be risky.

The airspace remained closed for 86 minutes, during which time flight patterns show dozens of other planes likely had to change course — making pilots and passengers unwitting participants in SpaceX’s test of the most powerful rocket ever built.

When SpaceX CEO Elon Musk chose a remote Texas outpost on the Gulf Coast to develop his company’s ambitious Starship, he put the 400-foot rocket on a collision course with the commercial airline industry.

Each time SpaceX did a test run of Starship and its booster, dubbed Super Heavy, the megarocket’s flight path would take it soaring over busy Caribbean airspace before it reached the relative safety of the open Atlantic Ocean. The company planned as many as five such launches a year as it perfected the craft, a version of which is supposed to one day land on the moon.

The FAA, which also oversees commercial space launches, predicted the impact to the national airspace would be “minor or minimal,” akin to a weather event, the agency’s 2022 approval shows. No airport would need to close and no airplane would be denied access for “an extended period of time.” 

But the reality has been far different. Last year, three of Starship’s five launches exploded at unexpected points on their flight paths, twice raining flaming debris over congested commercial airways and disrupting flights. And while no aircraft collided with rocket parts, pilots were forced to scramble for safety. 

A ProPublica investigation, based on agency documents, interviews with pilots and passengers, air traffic control recordings and photos and videos of the events, found that by authorizing SpaceX to test its experimental rocket over busy airspace, the FAA accepted the inherent risk that the rocket might put airplane passengers in danger. 

And once the rocket failed spectacularly and that risk became real, neither the FAA nor Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy sought to revoke or suspend Starship’s license to launch, a move that is permitted when “necessary to protect the public health and safety.” Instead, the FAA allowed SpaceX to test even more prototypes over the same airspace, adding stress to the already-taxed air traffic control system each time it launched.

The first two Starship explosions last year forced the FAA to make real-time calls on where to clear airspace and for how long. Such emergency closures came with little or no warning, ProPublica found, forcing pilots to suddenly upend their flight plans and change course in heavily trafficked airspace to get out of the way of falling debris. In one case, a plane with 283 people aboard ran low on fuel, prompting its pilot to declare an emergency and cross a designated debris zone to reach an airport.

The world’s largest pilots union told the FAA in October that such events call into question whether “a suitable process” is in place to respond to unexpected rocket mishaps. 

“There is high potential for debris striking an aircraft resulting in devastating loss of the aircraft, flight crew, and passengers,” wrote Steve Jangelis, a pilot and aviation safety chair.

The FAA said in response to questions that it “limits the number of aircraft exposed to the hazards, making the likelihood of a catastrophic event extremely improbable.” 

Yet for the public and the press, gauging that danger has been difficult. In fact, nearly a year after last January’s explosion, it remains unclear just how close Starship’s wreckage came to airplanes. SpaceX estimated where debris fell after each incident and reported that information to the federal government. But the company didn’t respond to ProPublica’s requests for that data, and the federal agencies that have seen it, including the FAA, haven’t released it. The agency told us that it was unaware of any other publicly available data on Starship debris.

In public remarks, Musk downplayed the risk posed by Starship. To caption a video of flaming debris in January, he wrote, “Entertainment is guaranteed!” and, after the March explosion, he posted, “Rockets are hard.” The company has been more measured, saying it learns from mistakes, which “help us improve Starship’s reliability.” 

For airplanes traveling at high speeds, there is little margin for error. Research shows as little as 300 grams of debris — or two-thirds of a pound — “could catastrophically destroy an aircraft,” said Aaron Boley, a professor at the University of British Columbia who has studied the danger space objects pose to airplanes. Photographs of Starship pieces that washed up on beaches show items much bigger than that, including large, intact tanks.

“It doesn’t actually take that much material to cause a major problem to an aircraft,” Boley said.

In response to growing alarm over the rocket’s repeated failures, the FAA has expanded prelaunch airspace closures and offered pilots more warning of potential trouble spots. The agency said it also required SpaceX to conduct investigations into the incidents and to “implement numerous corrective actions to enhance public safety.” An FAA spokesperson referred ProPublica’s questions about what those corrective actions were to SpaceX, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Experts say the FAA’s shifting approach telegraphs a disquieting truth about air safety as private companies increasingly push to use the skies as their laboratories: Regulators are learning as they go. 

During last year’s Starship launches, the FAA was under pressure to fulfill a dual mandate: to regulate and promote the commercial space industry while keeping the flying public safe, ProPublica found. In his October letter, Jangelis called the arrangement “a direct conflict of interest.” 

In an interview, Kelvin Coleman, who was head of FAA’s commercial space office during the launches, said his office determined that the risk from the mishaps “was within the acceptable limits of our regulations.” 

But, he said, “as more launches are starting to take place, I think we have to take a real hard look at the tools that we have in place and how do we better integrate space launch into the airspace.”

“We Need to Protect the Airspace” 

On Jan. 16, 2025, as SpaceX prepared to launch Starship 7 from Boca Chica, Texas, the government had to address the possibility the giant rocket would break up unexpectedly. 

Using debris modeling and simulations, the U.S. Space Force, the branch of the military that deals with the nation’s space interests, helped the FAA draw the contours of theoretical “debris response areas” — no-fly zones that could be activated if Starship exploded.

With those plans in place, Starship Flight 7 lifted off at 5:37 p.m. EST. About seven minutes later, it achieved a notable feat: Its reusable booster rocket separated, flipped and returned to Earth, where giant mechanical arms caught it as SpaceX employees cheered.

But about 90 seconds later, as Starship’s upper stage continued to climb, SpaceX lost contact with it. The craft caught fire and exploded, far above Earth’s surface. 

Air traffic control’s communications came alive with surprised pilots who saw the accident, some of whom took photos and shot videos of the flaming streaks in the sky:

Another controller warned a different pilot of debris in the area:

Two FAA safety inspectors were in Boca Chica to watch the launch at SpaceX’s mission control, said Coleman, who, for Flight 7, was on his laptop in Washington, D.C., receiving updates.

As wreckage descended rapidly toward airplanes’ flight paths over the Caribbean, the FAA activated a no-fly zone based on the vehicle’s last known position and prelaunch calculations. Air traffic controllers warned pilots to avoid the area, which stretched hundreds of miles over a ribbon of ocean roughly from the Bahamas to just east of St. Martin, covering portions of populated islands, including all of Turks and Caicos. While the U.S. controls some airspace in the region, it relies on other countries to cooperate when it recommends a closure. 

The FAA also cordoned off a triangular zone south of Key West.

When a pilot asked when planes would be able to proceed through the area, a controller replied:

There were at least 11 planes in the closed airspace when Starship exploded, and flight tracking data shows they hurried to move out of the way, clearing the area within 15 minutes. Such maneuvers aren’t without risk. “If many aircraft need to suddenly change their routing plans,” Boley said, “then it could cause additional stress” on an already taxed air traffic control system, “which can lead to errors.”

That wasn’t the end of the disruption though. The FAA kept the debris response area, or DRA, active for another 71 minutes, leaving some flights in a holding pattern over the Caribbean. Several began running low on fuel and some informed air traffic controllers that they needed to land.

“We haven’t got enough fuel to wait,” said one pilot for Iberia airlines who was en route from Madrid with 283 people on board.

The controller warned him that if he proceeded across the closed airspace, it would be at his own risk:

The plane landed safely in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Iberia did not respond to requests for comment, but in statements to ProPublica, other airlines downplayed the launch fallout. Delta, for example, said the incident “had minimal impact to our operation and no aircraft damage.” The company’s “safety management system and our safety culture help us address potential issues to reinforce that air transportation remains the safest form of travel in the world,” a spokesperson said.

After the incident, some pilots registered concerns with the FAA, which was also considering a request from SpaceX to increase the number of annual Starship launches from five to 25. 

“Last night’s Space X rocket explosion, which caused the diversion of several flights operating over the Gulf of Mexico, was pretty eye opening and scary,” wrote Steve Kriese in comments to the FAA, saying he was a captain for a major airline and often flew over the Gulf. “I do not support the increase of rocket launches by Space X, until a thorough review can be conducted on the disaster that occurred last night, and safety measures can be put in place that keeps the flying public safe.”

Kriese could not be reached for comment.

The Air Line Pilots Association urged the FAA to suspend Starship testing until the root cause of the failure could be investigated and corrected. A letter from the group, which represents more than 80,000 pilots flying for 43 airlines, said flight crews traveling in the Caribbean didn’t know where planes might be at risk from rocket debris until after the explosion. 

“By that time, it’s much too late for crews who are flying in the vicinity of the rocket operation, to be able to make a decision for the safe outcome of the flight,” wrote Jangelis, the pilot and aviation safety chair for the group. The explosion, he said, “raises additional concerns about whether the FAA is providing adequate separation of space operations from airline flights.”

In response, the FAA said it would “review existing processes and determine whether additional measures can be taken to improve situational awareness for flight crews prior to launch.”

According to FAA documents, the explosion propelled Starship fragments across an area nearly the size of New Jersey. Debris landed on beaches and roadways in Turks and Caicos. It also damaged a car. No one was injured.

Three months later, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which was evaluating potential impacts to marine life, sent the FAA a report with a map of where debris from an explosion could fall during future Starship failures. The estimate, which incorporated SpaceX’s own data from the Starship 7 incident, depicted an area more than three times the size of the airspace closed by the FAA. 

In a statement, an FAA spokesperson said NOAA’s map was “intended to cover multiple potential operations,” while the FAA’s safety analysis is for a “single actual launch.” A NOAA spokesperson said that the map reflects “the general area where mishaps could occur” and is not directly comparable with the FAA’s no-fly zones. 

Nevertheless Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas, said the illustration suggested the no-fly zones the FAA activated may not fully capture how far and wide debris spreads after a rocket breakup. The current predictive science, he said, “carries significant uncertainty.” 

At an industry conference a few weeks after the January explosion, Shana Diez, a SpaceX executive, acknowledged the FAA’s challenges in overseeing commercial launches.

“The biggest thing that we really would like to work with them on in the future is improving their real time awareness of where the launch vehicles are and where the launch vehicles’ debris could end up,” she said. 

“We’re Too Close to the Debris”

On Feb. 26 of last year, with the investigation into Starship Flight 7 still open, the FAA cleared Flight 8 to proceed, saying it “determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements.” 

The action was allowed under a practice that began during the first Trump administration, known as “expedited return-to-flight,” that permitted commercial space companies to launch again even before the investigation into a prior problematic flight was complete, as long as safety systems were working properly.

Coleman, who took a voluntary separation offer last year, said that before granting approval, the FAA confirmed that “safety critical systems,” such as the rocket’s ability to self-destruct if it went off course, worked as designed during Flight 7. 

By March 6, SpaceX was ready to launch again. This time the FAA gave pilots a heads-up an hour and 40 minutes before liftoff. 

“In the event of a debris-generating space launch vehicle mishap, there is the potential for debris falling within an area,” the advisory said, again listing coordinates for two zones in the Gulf and Caribbean. 

The FAA said a prelaunch safety analysis, which includes planning for potential debris, “incorporates lessons learned from previous flights.” The zone described in the agency’s advisory for the Caribbean was wider and longer than the previous one, while the area over the Gulf was significantly expanded.

Flight 8 launched at 6:30 p.m. EST and its booster returned to the launchpad as planned. But a little more than eight minutes into the flight, some of Starship’s engines cut out. The craft went into a spin and about 90 seconds later SpaceX lost touch with it and it exploded.

The FAA activated the no-fly zones less than two minutes later, using the same coordinates it had released prelaunch. 

Even with the advance warning, data shows at least five planes were in the debris zones at the time of the explosion, and they all cleared the airspace in a matter of minutes. 

A pilot on one of those planes, Frontier Flight 081, told passengers they could see the rocket explosion out the right-side windows. Dane Siler and Mariah Davenport, who were heading home to the Midwest after vacationing in the Dominican Republic, lifted the window shade and saw debris blazing across the sky, with one spot brighter than the rest.

“It literally looked like the sun coming out,” Siler told ProPublica. “It was super bright.”

They and other passengers shot videos, marveling at what looked like fireworks, the couple said. The Starship fragments appeared to be higher than the plane, many miles off. But before long, the pilot announced “I’m sorry to report that we have to turn around because we’re too close to the debris,” Siler said.

Frontier did not respond to requests for comment.

The FAA lifted the restriction on planes flying through the debris zone about 30 minutes after Starship exploded, much sooner than it had in January. The agency said that the Space Force had “notified the FAA that all debris was down approximately 30 minutes after the Starship Flight 8 anomaly.”

But in response to ProPublica’s questions, the Space Force acknowledged that it did not track the debris in real time. Instead, it said “computational modeling,” along with other scientific measures, allowed the agency to “predict and mitigate risks effectively.” The FAA said “the aircraft were not at risk” during the aftermath of Flight 8.

Experts told ProPublica that the science underlying such modeling is far from settled, and the government’s ability to anticipate how debris will behave after an explosion like Starship’s is limited. “You’re not going to find anybody who’s going to be able to answer that question with any precision,” said John Crassidis, an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Buffalo. “At best, you have an educated guess. At worst, it’s just a potshot.” 

Where pieces fall — and how long they take to land — depends on many factors, including atmospheric winds and the size, shape and type of material involved, experts said. 

During the breakup of Flight 7, the FAA kept airspace closed for roughly 86 minutes. However, Diez, the SpaceX executive, told attendees at the industry conference that, in fact, it had taken “hours” for all the debris to reach the ground. The FAA, SpaceX and Diez did not respond to follow-up questions about her remarks.

It’s unclear how accurate the FAA’s debris projections were for the March explosion. The agency acknowledged that debris fell in the Bahamas, but it did not provide ProPublica the exact location, making it impossible to determine whether the wreckage landed where the FAA expected. While some of the country’s islands were within the boundaries of the designated debris zone, most were not. Calls and emails to Bahamas officials were not returned.

The FAA said no injuries or serious property damage occurred.

FAA Greenlights More Launches

By May, after months of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency slashing spending and firing workers at federal agencies across Washington, the FAA granted SpaceX’s request to exponentially increase the number of Starship launches from Texas.

Starship is key to “delivering greater access to space and enabling cost-effective delivery of cargo and people to the Moon and Mars,” the FAA found. The agency said it will make sure parties involved “are taking steps to ensure the safe, efficient, and equitable use” of national airspace.

The U.S. is in a race to beat China to the lunar surface — a priority set by Trump’s first administration and continued under President Joe Biden. Supporters say the moon can be mined for resources like water and rare earth metals, and can offer a place to test new technologies. It could also serve as a stepping stone for more distant destinations, enabling Musk to achieve his longstanding goal of bringing humans to Mars. 

Trump pledged last January that the U.S. will “pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.” 

But with experimental launches like Starship’s, Jangelis said, the FAA should be “as conservative as possible” when managing the airspace below them.

“We expect the FAA to make sure our aircraft and our passengers stay safe,” he said. “There has to be a balance between the for-profit space business and the for-profit airlines and commerce.”

A More Conservative Approach

In mid-May, United Kingdom officials sent a letter to their U.S. counterparts, asking that SpaceX and the FAA change Starship’s flight path or take other precautions because they were worried about the safety of their Caribbean territories.

The following day, the FAA announced in a news release that it had approved the next Starship launch, pending either the agency’s closure of the investigation into Flight 8 or granting of a “return to flight” determination.

A week later, with the investigation into Flight 8 still open, the agency said SpaceX had “satisfactorily addressed” the causes of the mishap. The FAA did not detail what those causes were at the time but said it would verify that the company implemented all necessary “corrective actions.” 

This time the FAA was more aggressive on air safety. 

The agency preventively closed an extensive swath of airspace extending 1,600 nautical miles from the launch site, across the Gulf of Mexico and through part of the Caribbean. The FAA said that 175 flights or more could be affected, and it advised Turks and Caicos’ Providenciales International Airport to close during the launch.

The agency said the move was driven in part by an “updated flight safety analysis” and SpaceX’s decision to reuse a previously launched Super Heavy booster — something the company had never tried before. The agency also said it was “in close contact and collaboration with the United Kingdom, Turks & Caicos Islands, Bahamas, Mexico, and Cuba.”

Coleman told ProPublica that the concerns of the Caribbean countries, along with Starship’s prior failures, helped convince the FAA to close more airspace ahead of Flight 9.

On May 27, the craft lifted off at 7:36 p.m. EDT, an hour later than in March and two hours later than in January. The FAA said it required the launch window to be scheduled during “non-peak transit periods.”

This mission, too, ended in failure.

Starship’s Super Heavy booster blew up over the Gulf of Mexico, where it was supposed to have made what’s called a “hard splashdown.” 

In response, the FAA again activated an emergency no-fly zone. Most aircraft had already been rerouted around the closed airspace, but the agency said it diverted one plane and put another in a holding pattern for 24 minutes. The FAA did not provide additional details on the flights.

According to the agency, no debris fell outside the hazard area where the FAA had closed airspace. Pieces from the booster eventually washed up on Mexico’s beaches.

Starship’s upper stage reached the highest planned point in its flight path, but it went into a spin on the way down, blowing up over the Indian Ocean.

The Path Ahead

SpaceX launched Starship again in August and October. Unlike the prior flights, both went off without incident, and the company said it was turning its focus to the next generation of Starship to provide “service to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond.”

But about a week later, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he would open up SpaceX’s multibillion-dollar contract for a crewed lunar lander to rival companies. SpaceX is “an amazing company,” he said on CNBC. “The problem is, they’re behind.”

Musk pushed back, saying on X that “SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry.” He insulted Duffy, calling him “Sean Dummy” and saying “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”

The Department of Transportation did not respond to a request for comment or make Duffy available.

In a web post on Oct. 30, SpaceX said it was proposing “a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations” that would “result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety.”

SpaceX is now seeking FAA approval to add new trajectories as Starship strives to reach orbit. Under the plan, the rocket would fly over land in Florida and Mexico, as well as the airspace of Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, likely disrupting hundreds of flights. 

In its letter, the pilots’ union told the FAA that testing Starship “over a densely populated area should not be allowed (given the dubious failure record)” until the craft becomes more reliable. The planned air closures could prove “crippling” for the Central Florida aviation network, it added.

Still, SpaceX is undeterred. 

Diez, the company executive, said on X in October, “We are putting in the work to make 2026 an epic year for Starship.”

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The post “We’re Too Close to the Debris” appeared first on ProPublica.

Kaitlin spent the first weeks of her newborn son’s life in a panic. The hospital where she gave birth in October 2022 had administered a routine drug test, and a nurse informed her the lab had confirmed the presence of opiates. Child welfare authorities opened an investigation.

Months later, after searching her home and interviewing her older child and ex-husband, the agency dropped its investigation, having found no evidence of abuse or neglect, or of drug use.

The amount of opiates that upended Kaitlin’s life — 18.4 nanograms of codeine per milliliter of urine, according to court documents — was so minuscule that if she were an Air Force pilot, she could have had 200 times more in her system and still have been cleared to fly.

But for Kaitlin, the test triggered an investigation with potentially life-altering consequences. (ProPublica is using Kaitlin’s first name because her full name has been redacted from court documents. She declined to be interviewed for this story.) 

The ordeal “tempered what was otherwise supposed to be a joyous occasion” for the family, according to a lawsuit filed in 2024 by New Jersey’s attorney general against the hospital system, Virtua Health.

The hospital said in a statement that it has “a relentless commitment to evidence-based, equitable care for every family.” In court documents, it denied the lawsuit’s allegation that it discriminated against pregnant patients and noted that Kaitlin consented to the test. It also said that New Jersey law mandates it to submit reports of “substance-affected infants” to the state’s Division of Child Protection and Permanency. The lawsuit is pending and a judge has referred it to mediation.

Drug-testing labs typically report results in black and white: positive or negative. But a little-known fact about the industry is that those results are often based on standards that are wholly discretionary. For example, nearly all states use a threshold of 0.08% blood alcohol content to decide if a motorist is intoxicated. But for other drugs detected in urine, saliva and hair, cutoff levels vary from test to test and lab to lab — including Kaitlin’s test for opiates.

There’s no consensus among labs on what level should confirm the presence of codeine in urine, said Larry Broussard, a toxicologist who wrote an academic journal article on “growing evidence” that poppy seeds in bagels and muffins provoke positive test results. (Kaitlin ate a bagel shortly before taking her drug test, according to court documents.) There’s more consensus for some other drugs, but labs still disagree on appropriate cutoff levels for common drugs such as THC (the compound in marijuana that creates a high) and meth, said Broussard.

In 2022, the same year Kaitlin tested positive for codeine, the Department of Defense noticed a surge in personnel on military bases blaming positive tests on poppy seeds. Scientists at the military’s labs concluded that a change in the manufacturing process of some poppy seeds had led to contamination, causing service members to be falsely accused of abusing drugs.

So far, 62 positive tests for codeine have been “overturned and adjusted in Army records,” an Army spokesperson told ProPublica. In response, the Department of Defense in March 2024 doubled the military’s cutoff level for codeine tests to avoid false positives triggered by poppy seed muffins, bagels and other foods. Service members are now cleared for duty with up to 400 times more codeine in their urine than is used to justify child welfare investigations in some states, ProPublica found.

ProPublica reviewed cutoff levels used to confirm the presence of common drugs, including opiates, meth, THC and cocaine, as cited in court records, labs’ contracts with government agencies and scientific journals, as well as in interviews with toxicologists. We found that the cutoff levels used by the child welfare systems vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. One large state agency, Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services, contractually required a lab to use levels that it later acknowledged were “scientifically unsupportable.” 

Ted Simon, an expert toxicology witness and a board member of the nonprofit Center for Truth in Science, which advocates for objectivity in research, said agencies are better off consulting with labs to set cutoff levels. That’s because “some labs do validation testing to ensure the accuracy of their cutoffs based on knowledge of human biology.” But even when labs set levels, they don’t always get them right. Some labs “just use the sensitivity of the chemical analysis to measure vanishingly tiny concentrations with no way to assess the relevance to humans,” Simon said. This can result in situations like Kaitlin’s, where the hospital’s cutoff was near the lower limit of what sophisticated lab instruments can detect, he said after reviewing her case.

Meanwhile, “labs tell their clients what they want to hear and are hesitant to disclose the uncertainty inherent in their methods,” Simon said.

There’s no industry consensus on what, or if anything, should be done about the differing standards. Some experts see a need for uniform levels but acknowledge it would require lengthy vetting before toxicologists and other stakeholders agree on what’s appropriate. Others maintain that as long as labs are transparent and support their decisions with research, they should continue choosing their own levels. “The labs do what works for the instruments that they have,” said Simon.

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Child welfare agencies employ a patchwork of drug testing standards, according to contracts and procurement documents.

Some, like Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services, require labs to use high cutoff levels that protect against false positives. Other agencies’ contracts with their drug testing services do not specify cutoff levels, leaving the decision to the lab.

A few large agencies require labs to use ultra-low levels, which catch more users but come with risks. Incidental exposure to a substance in the environment and over-the-counter medications can trigger positives. “The smaller the concentration that you try to detect, the more likely you are to get false positive results,” said toxicologist Paul Cary, who wrote a guide to testing for drug courts, which aim to address the addictions of people accused of drug-related crimes and avoid incarceration.

The federal government sets standards for drug testing 14 million people. These include public-sector employees as well as workers whose performance affects the safety of others, known as safety-sensitive roles, like airline pilots, truck drivers and those working in nuclear facilities. For decades, the program was known for a rigorous scientific review and inspection process to ensure accuracy. 

In 2025, President Donald Trump’s second administration overhauled the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the federal agency responsible for the testing standards program, and dismissed half of its staff. It also disbanded the expert panel that proposed scientifically valid cutoff levels, the Drug Testing Advisory Board. “There could be issues for national security or safety sensitive issues that might be impacted given the recent changes,” said Hyden Shen, former regulatory and policy oversight lead at the health agency’s division of workplace programs. In the spring, Shen resigned alongside almost half of his division. He spoke to ProPublica after leaving federal employment.

Private labs have long been free to set their own standards, independent of the federal government’s recommended levels. The CEO of a laboratory company specializing in testing for probation departments, child welfare agencies and courts testified in a lawsuit that in 2018 the lab had lowered cutoff levels for cocaine in hair follicle tests by a factor of five without amending its contract with the state child welfare agency. The company said that the change was to align its levels with scientific updates and that state agencies were made aware of the new cutoffs when it reported test results. The lawsuit was settled with the lab denying wrongdoing.

Federal workers who test positive for drugs can’t be punished until their results are scrutinized by medical review officers, physicians who verify that positive drug test results aren’t being triggered by legitimate medications. (For example, without a special follow-up called an isomer test, over-the-counter Vicks VapoInhaler is indistinguishable from street drugs in multiple types of drug tests.) But medical review of test results is expensive, and few state agencies require it for child welfare cases or for testing people on probation. One lab competing for a contract to test probationers and juveniles in a residential facility in Kansas discouraged the use of medical review officers, saying it would “result in extra expense and extra time for results delivery.” Other state agencies, especially those that oversee parole, probation or prisons, skip confirmation testing entirely and rely instead on cheaper, less accurate immunoassay tests, unless someone contests their result and can afford to pay out of pocket for a follow-up, according to contracts between state courts and labs. 

Agencies “are effectively saying, ‘Most of these people probably did use drugs. And, yeah, OK, there’s a handful that didn’t. But it would bankrupt us to have to confirm all of these,’” said Karen Murtagh, executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, which has represented inmates in drug testing cases.

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In the spring of 2019, Marie Herrera was working to reunite with her four kids in Michigan’s foster care system. (ProPublica is referring to Herrera by her middle name at her request, to maintain her privacy as she moves forward with her life.) At a hearing on her case, a foster care worker testified that it was going well, according to a filing from her attorney: “Mother had attended all eleven parenting times, had procured employment, was in therapy, lived in three-quarters housing, and tested negative for illegal drugs during the current reporting period.”

Then that July, Herrera’s saliva tested positive for cocaine. Herrera admitted to being in recovery from an addiction but denied using the drug. Over the next eight months, two more of her drug tests were confirmed positive for cocaine by the state’s lab. She sought testing from an outside lab, which didn’t detect illegal drug use.

According to her test results from the state’s lab, which Herrera shared with ProPublica, the levels of cocaine and its metabolite in her system ranged from 1.065 to 1.774 ng/ml, just above the state’s cutoff of 1 ng/ml in saliva. If the positive-test threshold for federal workers had been applied to Herrera’s tests, she could have had more than four times as much of the drug in her saliva and still been cleared to fly a plane.

But Herrera’s positive test from December 2019 caused the judge to take away her unsupervised parenting time, according to court records.

“The positive drug tests turned my world upside down and ruined my life,” said Herrera. What she didn’t know is that behind the scenes, Michigan’s child welfare agency was reviewing — and preparing to raise — its cutoff levels.

Michigan’s levels for cocaine and other drugs in saliva had been set by its drug testing vendor, Forensic Fluids, in 2018, according to public records. (Forensic Fluids did not respond to a request for comment.) Michigan contractually required the same levels when it signed with a new lab, Averhealth, in 2019. 

But the child welfare agency noticed conflicting results between its tests and those ordered by law enforcement agencies, according to public records. Some individuals who tested positive for a drug with one agency tested negative with another.

In November 2020, at the urging of its new lab, the agency raised its levels. Communications between the agency and Averhealth show both were concerned that low cutoffs might not be “forensically defensible” due to “uncertainty around environmental exposure.”

“Current levels … are scientifically unsupportable,” Michigan’s child welfare agency wrote in a memo about the change.

In a statement, Averhealth, the lab that processed Herrera’s tests, said the mismatch in results  that concerned Michigan administrators “in no way calls into question the accuracy or reliability” of its testing. “Inconsistencies occurred when different types of tests were conducted (saliva or hair) or when the individual was tested days later,” the company said, noting that “different types of testing have different limitations.” The company said its test results “simply attest to whether a drug is present in a specimen and, if so, in what quantity. It is left to the courts to decide what, if any consequences, follow.”

In Herrera’s case, the lab said, low-level cocaine positives “likely represent ingestion of cocaine” and that “passive exposure as an explanation is highly doubtful.” The company also pointed out that Herrera had several high-level positive tests for methamphetamine in the fall of 2020, nine months after the court took away her unsupervised parenting time. 

Herrera admits she’s relapsed at times. But she also says that being labeled a cocaine user early on in her case, when she says she wasn’t using, derailed her recovery. Herrera believes it set her up to fail by creating an adversarial relationship with her caseworker and judge. “I wasn’t grateful about what they were doing to me,” she says.

Herrera’s parental rights were terminated in 2021, less than a year after Michigan raised its cutoff levels for cocaine in saliva. In denying Herrera’s appeal, a judge cited her refusal to participate in further drug tests, additional failed tests when she did comply, and her lack of housing and income, among other things.

When Herrera was told she could never again see her kids, she said, she was devastated and relapsed again. “Fuck it, if they say I’m an addict, then I’ll numb the pain.”

“I think about my kids every single day,” she said. “It’s affected me completely.”

Even after raising its cutoffs, Michigan’s levels were still far lower than those used for federal workers. The state declined to comment, but a memo stated that officials considered the federal levels inappropriate because they “do not assess the impacts of how those substances may affect a person’s behavior” or “how that use may impact child safety.”

Drug testing policy experts say it’s not possible for any test, no matter the cutoff level, to reliably predict child safety.

“A drug test doesn’t tell you if a person has a substance use disorder, if they are in recovery, or whether a child is safe,” said Nancy K. Young, executive director of Children and Family Futures, which consults for child welfare agencies, and co-author of a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration policy paper on drug testing for child welfare agencies. Young said administrators should consider test results as “just one data point” and rely more on “casework and a relationship with the family” to determine whether a child is safe and well.

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