Sewage holds secrets of illegal drug use in United States

William Atkins
Wednesday, 22 August 2007 22:07

Science - Health

U.S. researchers are developing a quick, reliable, and cheap way to test illegal drug use in communities across the United States by using wastewater from sewer systems.           

The new screening test will provide accurate measurements on illegal and illicit drug use by testing drug residues and metabolites (byproducts of metabolism) excreted in urine and flushed into community sewage treatment plants.

U.S. environmental chemist Jennifer Field and fellow collaborators from Oregon State University and the University of Washington tested ten cities (with populations between 17,000 and 600,000 people) in the United States using their new method.

Field commented, “Wastewater facilities are wonderful places to understand what humans consume and excrete.”

Preliminary results show that the technique can identify illegal drugs such as methamphetamine (‘meth’) and metabolites of cocaine and marijuana, along with legal drugs such as methadone and oxycodone.

Their research involves using common indicators, what are called biomarkers, to distinguish drugs excreted in human urine from other materials in sewage, such as agricultural and industrial runoff.

Part of their results showed that one (unidentified) city involved in gambling had five times the level of the illegal drug meth than other cities, while some cities in the central part of the United States showed little or no meth in their sewer systems.

Their test is so accurate that it can tell that many drugs are used more often on the weekends rather than the weekdays.

The one legal drug that was found most commonly throughout the United States—not surprisingly—was caffeine.

Besides Field, the other researchers in the study are Aurea Chiaia, Daniel Sudakin, and Caleb Banta-Green. Their results (“Determination of illicit drugs and biomarkers in raw municipal wastewater influent as a tool for drug epidemiology”) will be presented at the Tuesday, August 21, 2007 national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.

The abstract of the paper states: "The synthesis and abuse of illicit drugs is a widespread public health problem. Current techniques in drug-use epidemiology are limited by time lags, poor geographic resolution, substantial under-reporting bias, and an over reliance on morbidity and mortality data. To address these limitations, we have initiated a program that links analytical measurements for illicit drugs, key metabolites and precursors with population indicators including residents served by sewer districts as well as human population biomarkers. A sensitive and selective analytical method based on large-volume injection and liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry was developed to quantify abuse drugs and human biomarkers in raw sewage influents with a goal of obtaining high throughput and accuracy. Illicit drugs, metabolites, and precursor concentrations measured in 24 hr flow-normalized composites of raw influents from municipal wastewater treatment plants are normalized against population indicators for use as a low-cost tool to estimate community burdens of illicit drugs."

The researchers hope that their new test will assist law enforcement officials in their ability to track the distribution and use of dangerous drugs throughout the United States. Federal law enforcement agencies have already shown interest in the study.