European cities' sewer water exposes use of cocaine, cannabis, meth and ecstasy

[neversickanymore]

European cities' sewer water exposes use of cocaine, cannabis, meth and ecstasy
By Ben Brumfield
May 29, 2014

(CNN) -- Imagine you could let your city urinate in a cup and submit the sample to a laboratory for drug testing. Would it pass?
Researchers in Europe did something similar with 42 major cities, and many of them failed.

Lab tests on sewage water to detect chemicals excreted after drug use turned up high levels of cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy, meth and other amphetamines.

The scientists' results, published this week in the journal Addiction, read like a top 10 list of European party capitals.
Some of them should come as no surprise to experienced travelers.

Amsterdam in the Netherlands, for example, where smoking cannabis is tolerated -- though not legal -- in its trademark coffee shops, hovered near the top of the list in every category but meth.

The port city, also saddled with the reputation of a red-light district hub, took second place in levels of ecstasy excretions found in wastewater, according to the study led by the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology.

As for cannabis, a lesser-known town bumped Amsterdam to second place.

The top spot for traces of pot in wastewater went to the Serbian city of Novi Sad, population 265,000. Paris came in third.

Serious problems

The study may seem like a review of dereliction hot spots, but its aim is serious: to help detect dangerous addictions and spikes in the use of certain illicit drugs.

Multiple governmental authorities, drug prevention councils, universities and laboratories participated in the research.

The scientists are hoping to develop a useful monitoring tool.

It's hard to get solid data on drug usage, because it's traditionally gathered via questionnaires, the study said. Respondents can fudge the answers or forget details.

Drug users also sometimes don't know what they are really taking or whether other drugs are mixed in.

The laboratory analysis of wastewater has the potential to get more accurate results more quickly and detect new drugs spreading into a local market.

London cocaine, Prague meth

The study reveals apparent preferences for certain drugs in certain regions.

Particularly high levels of benzoylecgonine, the main metabolite of cocaine, turned up in the wastewater of Amsterdam, the Belgian city of Antwerp,

London and Zurich. Barcelona, Spain, and Basel, Switzerland, were not far behind.

London sewage also turned up high levels of ecstasy, but the British capital did not stick out on the list of the other drugs tested for.

There were no measurements taken there for cannabis.

The Netherlands swept the top three on the list of ecstasy remnants gone down the drain, according to the analysis, but was much further down the list for meth concentration.

That drug appears be prevalent in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and parts of Germany.

The highest concentration of meth excretions showed up in Prague's wastewater, but in all other categories, the Czech city landed in the mid-teens.
The Swiss team turned in results that indicate that ecstasy is a weekend drug in that country. Its excretion levels in wastewater crept along during the week and then rocketed on Fridays, peaked Sundays and nosedived Mondays.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/28/world/europe/wastewater-drug-tests/


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

some people sure must love to play with human waste.

 

[NeighborhoodThreat]

I'd love to see them do the same study with North American cities

 

[MrCookiE]

This is what they done a couple of years ago, in Leicester square London for a month or two there was a large amount of porta loos placed all around the area for the night time revellers to use when moving from bar to bar and club to club ect. After the porta loos had been filled up/used over that time period they sent the waste off to be analysed to find out some of the drugs where people were taking in the capital.

 

[spacejunk]

I wonder if prescription drugs were part of this analysis?
I think it would be a shame if such this fascinating data was collected solely for the purposes of law enforcement.
Drugs and their metabolites in sewage can have real impacts in terms of their effect on aquatic and marine ecosystems (of particular concern are hormones such as oral contraceptives, antibiotics and other medications).
This can also be of concern for populations that "recycle" wastewater to use as fresh drinking water.
I would imagine that technology has been developed to eliminate trace amounts of drugs and hormones from drinking water, but it is fascinating - and scary - to think of the possible unforeseen consequences of contaminating the world's ecosystems.

Having just done a quick search to turn up information on this topic, i found a couple of articles which shed some more light on this.

Only about half of the prescription drugs and other newly emerging contaminants in sewage are removed by treatment plants.

Triclosan, an antibacterial and antifungal compound found in some soaps, toothpastes and other consumer products, has proven acutely toxic to algae and can act as a hormone disruptor in fish. Triclosan was found frequently, according to the new report and plants had “medium removal efficiency.”

Also, the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac bioaccumulates in fish, but its impact is unclear, said Diana Aga, a chemistry professor and researcher at the University of Buffalo who studies emerging chemicals in the Great Lakes.

Aga said even without knowing exact impacts, consistently seeing antibiotics show up in effluent is concerning.

“Even at low levels you don’t want to have people ingest antibiotics regularly because it will promote resistance,” she said.

This is more information on the subject of the article quoted in the OP;

Meth in London? Heroin in Zagreb? Sewage pinpoints drug use in communities

(Featuring some information that goes some way in addressing NeighborhoodThreat's comment) -

♦ In Oregon, cocaine and ecstasy are more common in urban than in rural wastewater according to a 2009 study.

♦ During Superbowl weekend in Miami in 2010, drug levels in sewage did not differ much from a normal weekend.

♦ In three anonymous Canadian cities, cocaine was the most widely detected drug, while ecstasy levels were much lower than expected, according to a 2011 study.

Burgard estimates that more than 20 such studies have been conducted in Europe over the past decade. In comparison, only a few have been conducted in North America.

"If you can look at drug trends through wastewater you can have a conversation with your community and try to make changes. And then, testing the wastewater after such changes, you can see if you're having an impact." - Caleb Banta-Green, University of WashingtonBanta-Green said Europe got started with this research earlier but it’s starting to gain more traction in the United States. He is writing a paper based on data he collected from 20 U.S. cities.

Wastewater doesn’t tell you who’s using, how they’re using it or why they’re using it. Also, by looking at amounts, you don’t know if you have “100 heavy users or 1,000 light users,” Banta-Green said.

Banta-Green cautions that it’s also important to not take one sample in a community – without previous samples or context – and try to draw conclusions about drug use.

But despite such limitations, the technique has advantages over quantifying drug use with surveys, which Burgard called “highly suspect.” Given the illegality and stigma of drug use, those surveyed may not always tell the truth, he said.

Testing sewage also covers entire populations, across racial, age, gender and economic statuses, Banta-Green said.
And wastewater doesn’t lie.

“Increasingly people have no idea what they’re even taking,” Banta-Green said. “I was looking at police evidence for the drugs in the Seattle area that were supposed to be ecstasy. The main ecstasy ingredient was only present in 26 of the 81 drugs. Sewage can tell us something about these ingredients.”

Pretty fascinating - and scary - shit!