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Waste water analysis used to flush out drug users

Breecamb

Breecamb

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Joined
Feb 3, 2009
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216
DRUG users could soon be caught out by their own excrement thanks to groundbreaking research techniques being developed and studied by universities in Tasmania and Queensland.

Site-specific waste water analysis is a relatively new science that involves testing sewage to produce an accurate picture of the types and quantities of drugs used by people in a certain area.

Testing waste water from prisons will form a major part of the study, said the lead researcher, Jeremy Prichard, from the University of Tasmania. He predicts the method may be adopted at nightclubs, music festivals and private residences, too.
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''Potentially, we could develop a very accurate map of levels of drug use within a particular setting,'' he said.

Preliminary data from sewage treatment plants in Queensland municipalities revealed much higher than expected levels of cocaine, ''equivalent to amphetamine-type substances'', although the results are yet to be peer-reviewed.

The method could spread to large-scale music events or be used by agencies to gather intelligence in cases of drug consumption or manufacturing.

Police could use the data to identify a need for search warrants or random drug searches. Researchers could use the data to monitor drug use trends and identify new drugs entering the market.

The Big Day Out has conducted drug-use surveys but Dr Prichard said waste water could prove more accurate than self-reporting.

Craig Bell, director of the Stonewall Hotel on Oxford Street, said most nightclub and bar owners would resist the technology. ''What's to say someone didn't take drugs outside, down the road, or at home before they came into our nightclub and used our toilets?'' he said.

A NSW Police spokeswoman said it was monitoring the outcome of the studies ''to identify any potential opportunities''.

The Australian Federal Police is participating in the research and has provided $5000 in funding with more provided by Queensland Health Forensic Services and the Australian Future Forensics Innovation Network.

Don Weatherburn, director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics, said its greatest potential use would be monitoring drug use in prison. Although nearly half of all inmates surveyed in the 2009 NSW Inmates Survey had taken drugs while incarcerated, Dr Prichard said inmates still tend to under-report use for fear of negative consequences and disruption of drug markets by prison authorities.

Methods to evaluate supply and demand reduction strategies are also poor, and random urine samples are an expensive way to monitor drug use.

Waste water testing will begin at prisons in Tasmania this year with other states' corrective services indicating interest in the project.

Dr Prichard said ethical and legal standards would have to be met if waste water analysis was to be widely adopted in the community. Identifying individuals would be prohibited if the testing was employed by research agencies but police may not necessarily have to obtain a warrant to test waste water of people suspected of using or manufacturing drugs. The findings could be used to apply for a warrant.

''It's like the scenario of the private investigator rifling through people's garbage,'' said Stephen Blanks, secretary of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties.

''It's in the police's rights but it points out a gap in privacy protection because people have a legitimate expectation that when they put their waste out, their privacy will be protected. It opens up Pandora's box.''
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And the pendulum swings.....

source
Mods, not really sure where to put this - unless part of an L&E 'futures' thread? :\
 
Interesting, so are they going to analyze everybody's individual waste pipe or just general areas?

I think most (decent) police departments could already tell you which neighborhoods/general areas have more drug use than others.

Just sounds like another waste of government funds to violate citizen's liberties.

I'm also wondering how well it would hold up in any sort of court. How can you really prove/disprove who pissed/shat in who's toilet? I can't speak for others here, but I don't only use the toilets at my own house exclusively...
 
Do they think its going to help when most of us can piss in the backyard quite easily?

I think they'll find a lot of it comes from the same areas they already knew about and a lot from clubbing areas haha
 
Yeah sounds like it would tell you things that we already know, e.g. people at nightclubs drink booze and use drugs.

As for using it on personal bathrooms... you'd still have to prove who used it, and actually do a drug test on the person you think contributed the positive sample. I can see how this could be applied in prisons, but for wider use it seems like a somewhat useful research tool but even then there are problems.
 
I've read abstracts on PubMed about people doing studies (mainly in Western Europe) regarding drug tests with wastewater, usually to ID when during the week people were using drugs.

Naturally the results showed an increase in cocaine, cannabis and MDMA usage during the weekends...
 
^ How can you be so flippant!? That is groundbreaking statistical analysis right there!

I think I'm going to need the full PubMed article on that one, NT, because I'm not sure if I even believe that...

;)
 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20447786

...Four wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) have been retained for the study, taking into account biological treatment, volume capacity, geographic location and social environment. Cocaine and its major metabolite benzoylecgonine (BZE), amphetamine, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and buprenorphine were measured in raw water and WWTP effluent using HPLC-MS/MS after SPE extraction. Amphetamine was rarely detected. Cocaine and BZE were quantified at levels from 5 to 282 ng L(-1) and 15 to 849 ng L(-1), respectively. MDMA and buprenorphine concentrations remained under 20 ng L(-1). Cocaine consumption was estimated from cocaine or BZE concentrations measured in raw water and the results showed significant difference in drug taking during week or weekend. The estimated doses observed in this study are lower than those reported for others countries, especially Spain and Italy. MDMA consumption was estimated at lower levels than cocaine.
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also:

The spatial epidemiology of cocaine, methamphetamine and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) use: a demonstration using a population measure of community drug load derived from municipal wastewater.

A one year investigation of the occurrence of illicit drugs in wastewater from Brussels, Belgium.

Illicit drugs in Canadian municipal wastewater and estimates of community drug use.


...just because I've got some free time this Friday evening ;)
 
That lousy International Date Line, eh?

No problem for the article by the way, PubMed has that nifty linking feature on the right-hand side which makes it about as hard to get out of as wikipedia, you end up much farther away then you originally planned in your research/"research" quite quickly.

What time is it exactly where you are? I'm on the east coast of the United States. And yeah, cops know where the drugs are, everybody does.

Those articles are still interesting though, it would be cool to see how cities' wastewater numbers compare to public conceptions about which drugs are more popular/available in those cities.
 
It's 2311 here (or was, I like 24 hour time better than 12x2 time, makes more sense.)

I also like OTC codeine, of course the United States is like the only place you can't get that :X

A study like the one we're discussing would put scientific backing behind "my city has more drug X than your city does" statements.

(Truth, my city does have more drugs than your city does, but I digress...) ;)
 
To further this theory. I was thinking. what if theres a way to properly filter out all the drugs from sewage and make it for human consumption again???? LOL

it'd be like Jenkem, but with actual drugs that works LOL
 
headdah said:
To further this theory. I was thinking. what if theres a way to properly filter out all the drugs from sewage and make it for human consumption again???? LOL

it'd be like Jenkem, but with actual drugs that works LOL
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It could probably be done, especially if you had a drug that was largely excreted unchanged.

Hell, that's how phosphorus was discovered. :)
 
^ As people said, it probably wouldn't/couldn't be used on an individual basis. There are plenty of other things happening that are more 1984 than this...
 
I first read of such monitoring in Europe some 5 years ago. Head space analysis of the air over cities has also been employed.
 
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