[Pharmwaste] One big drug test: Analyzing a city's sewage can put a number on its vices

[Tenace, Laurie]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sewer23-2008jun23,0,3828587.story -
long

One big drug test: Analyzing a city's sewage can put a number on its vices
Experts are examining the outflow in several U.S. and European cities, and
the data can be surprising.
By Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer 
5:39 PM PDT, June 22, 2008 
Which city uses more cocaine: Los Angeles or London? Is heroin a big problem
in San Diego? And has Ecstasy emerged in rural America?

Environmental scientists are beginning to use an unsavory new tool -- raw
sewage -- to paint an accurate portrait of drug abuse in communities. Like
one big, citywide urinalysis, tests at municipal sewage plants in many areas
of the United States and Europe, including Los Angeles County, have detected
illicit drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana.

Law enforcement officials have long sought a way to come up with reliable and
verifiable calculations of narcotics use, to identify new trends and
formulate policies. Surveys, the backbone of drug-use estimates, are only as
reliable as the people who answer them. But sewage does not lie.

Since people excrete chemicals in urine and flush it down toilets, measuring
raw sewage for street drugs can provide quick, fairly precise snapshots of
drug use in communities, even on a particular day.

The results have been intriguing: Methamphetamine levels in sewage are much
higher in Las Vegas than in Omaha and Oklahoma City, Okla. Los Angeles County
has more cocaine in its sewage than several major European cities. And
Londoners apparently are heavier users of heroin than people in cities in
Italy and Switzerland.

"Every sample has one illicit drug or another, regardless of location," said
Jennifer Field, an environmental chemist at Oregon State University who has
tested sewage in many U.S. cities. "You may see differences from place to
place, but there's always something."

The new practice of testing sewage has illuminated an environmental threat:
Many urban waterways around the world are contaminated with low doses of
cocaine and other illicit drugs from treated sewage.

So far, this "sewage forensics" or "sewage epidemiology" has not been
widespread. Treatment plants do not regularly monitor sewage for street
drugs. The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to add illicit drugs
to the array of substances that could be monitored daily at treatment plants.

Unlike prescription drugs and personal care products, which are a hot topic
in environmental contamination, illicit drugs have long been below the radar.

Christian Daughton, chief of environmental chemistry at the EPA's National
Exposure Research Laboratory, first proposed the tests in 2001.

"To me, chemicals are chemicals. All chemicals, whether legal or illegal,
have the potential to get into the environment, and living organisms have a
potential to be exposed," Daughton said.

Daughton, who was interested in environmental ramifications, realized that
the data could help law enforcement, sociologists and others trying to gauge
trends in drug abuse.

Most of those experts rely on door-to-door annual surveys, which are based on
questioning of 70,000 people nationwide. Based on that, they estimate more
than 20 million Americans used illicit drugs in 2006.

Scientists in Italy, led by Roberto Fanelli and Ettore Zuccato, were the
first to implement his idea, testing sewage in Milan, London and Lugano,
Switzerland in 2005.

Amphetamines, including ecstasy, were the least prevalent drugs in the three
cities, while marijuana was widely detected, the Mario Negri Institute for
Pharmacological Research reported in the online version of the journal
Environmental Health Perspectives to their work, published last month.

For every 1,000 people, about 210 milligrams of heroin were used daily in
London, compared with 70 in Milan and 100 in Lugano. Amphetamine use also was
higher in London.

The scientists were even able to use sewage to estimate individual use and
weekly trends. For instance, they estimated that people in Milan used twice
as much cocaine, about 35 grams per person per year, than Italy's government
surveys had suggested.

Cocaine use peaked on Saturdays, while heroin and marijuana use remained
steady weeklong.

In the United States, officials at the White House's Office of National Drug
Control Policy looked for cocaine in sewage from Los Angeles County and 23
other regions in 2006.

Untreated sewage at all eight treatment plants tested in Los Angeles County
contained cocaine metabolite, according to data obtained from the Los Angeles
County Sanitation Districts. Palmdale and Lancaster had the highest
concentrations, averaging 3.5 parts per billion. The lowest, averaging 1.4
ppb, were from Long Beach and Valencia. 

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Laurie J. Tenace
Environmental Specialist
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
2600 Blair Stone Road, MS 4555
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-2400
PH: (850) 245-8759
FAX: (850) 245-8811
Laurie.Tenace at dep.state.fl.us 

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http://www.dep.state.fl.us/waste/categories/mercury/default.htm

Unwanted Medications web pages:
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/waste/categories/medications/default.htm




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