Cass
On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 9:03 PM, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
> <
> http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-sewer24-2008jun24,0,5177499.story
> >
> http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-sewer24-2008jun24,0,5177499.story
>
>
> Experts are examining the outflow in several U.S. and European
> cities, and the data can be revealing.
> By Marla Cone
> Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
>
> June 24, 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 that 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 London; Milan,
> Italy; and Lugano, Switzerland, in 2005.
>
> Amphetamines, including Ecstasy, were the least prevalent drugs in
> the three cities, whereas marijuana was widely detected, the Mario
> Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research reported in the online
> version of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives on 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 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.
>
> In all the Los Angeles County locations, the cocaine metabolite was
> more concentrated than in Omaha and in Italian, Swiss and British
> cities, which all had less than 1 ppb, according to a comparison of
> several studies.
>
> Other tests have shown that some U.S. cities have a bigger
> methamphetamine problem than Europe. Within the U.S., Las Vegas'
> concentrations were five times higher than Omaha's and twice Oklahoma
> City's, said Field, who conducted those tests.
>
> Comparing cities can be tricky. Concentrations can fluctuate because
> of volumes of flow, time of day and how long waste travels through
> sewers, which gives drugs a chance to degrade.
>
> "This has caught on only recently, and people are still trying to
> understand the uncertainties," said Field, who is currently analyzing
> data from 96 locations in Oregon.
>
> Jennifer de Vallance, spokeswoman for the White House's Office of
> National Drug Control Policy, said the testing of sewage in 2006 was
> an experiment to see if it could provide useful data to federal drug
> officials at a low cost.
>
> "It came back very favorable. Our determination was that it probably
> could be done on a larger scale," she said.
>
> EPA Assistant Administrator Benjamin Grumbles said that the EPA and
> the national drug office are "working on the details" of a voluntary
> program at sewage plants that will test for illicit drugs.
>
> "This is sensitive for various communities because these substances
> do have a stigma attached to them," Daughton said. San Diego, for
> example, refused to grant permission to researchers.
>
> The Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County don't test for illicit
> drugs because iDrug Enforcement Administration permits to handle
> controlled substances would be needed, said supervising engineer Ann Heil.
>
> "It's too hard to test for it. We can't have morphine lying around to
> calibrate equipment," she said.
>
> Some researchers are now checking the environment for illicit drugs.
> Traces of prescription drugs have been detected in some drinking
> water supplies, and cocaine and other drugs have been found in
> rivers. No one has tested drinking water for illicit drugs.
>
> "Since most of these residues still have potent pharmacological
> activities, their presence in the aquatic environment may have
> potential implications for human health and wildlife," the scientists
> from Milan reported in February.
>
> Although few researchers are studying the effect of these ultra-low
> doses, scientists say the threat to people is probably minimal. To
> get a typical dose of cocaine, someone would have to drink 1,000
> liters of raw sewage, Field said.
>
> For now, this new drug test remains anonymous. Wastewater from
> thousands, sometimes millions, of people is pooled at treatment
> plants, so it cannot be tracked to any individual or specific location.
>
> But because waste also can be tested in local sewers, questions about
> privacy have been raised.
>
> "You could take this down to a community, a street, even a house,"
> Daughton said. "You can do all kinds of stuff with this. It's sort of
> unlimited."
>
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