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Wastewater analysis, an emerging science
Wastewater analysis: ‘an exciting and promising prospect’.
New developments in wastewater analysis — an emerging science with the potential to monitor levels of illicit drug use in the community — were explored at the latest European meeting on the topic hosted by the EMCDDA on 28 January.
Thanks to technological advances and more sensitive detection techniques developed over the last 30 years, experts today can detect and quantify drug residues in liquids, even at very low concentrations (1).
By sampling a known source of wastewater — for example a sewage influent to a wastewater treatment plant — scientists can obtain precise estimates of the total quantity of drugs consumed by a community by measuring the levels of illicit drug metabolites excreted in urine. The method also has the potential to monitor trends and changing consumption habits in real time, while preserving the anonymity of the individuals involved.
While such methods do not provide the type of detailed consumption data currently yielded by drug surveys (e.g. lifetime, recent, current use), their ability to pinpoint total consumption rates in a given population make them a useful complement to existing methods for studying drug use trends in Europe.
Opening the meeting in Lisbon, EMCDDA Director Wolfgang Götz said: ‘Drug use presents us with a moving target and is difficult to observe. It is by nature a covert and often stigmatised activity, and no single measure can provide us with the full picture. The possibility that a new technique for estimating illicit drug use might be added to our existing multi-indicator repertoire is, therefore, an exciting and promising prospect’.
Over 20 analytical chemists, epidemiologists and engineers from Europe and the USA participated in the event. They reviewed the methodological and technological progress achieved since the first European meeting on this topic, held at the EMCDDA in 2007.
The participants reported on an exploratory collaboration project aimed at generating comparable data from several European cities, for cocaine, heroin, amphetamine, methamphetamine and MDMA.
Discussions at the meeting focused on how European research and networking in this area could be facilitated. Potential new uses of the technique were also explored, such as to inform analysis on the size of the drug market or to identify the use of new psychoactive substances in communities.
Ana Gallegos and Jane Mounteney
(1) For example, in mass spectrometry and high-performance liquid chromatography.
In this issue...
- Wastewater analysis, an emerging science
- Mephedrone ban across the EU
- Monitoring illicit drug supply in Europe
- Measuring cannabis dependence in the general population
- SMART: developing standard measures of alcohol use
- Policies and clinical practices in the treatment of cannabis-related problems
- A new European Society for Prevention Research
- Health in prisons
- 2011 work programme — in step with today’s drugs problem
- Russian drugs agency visits EMCDDA
- Training on building national drug observatories in the Southern Mediterranean
- Poland passes new law to control ‘head shops’ and ‘legal highs’
- Cooperation with Europe’s closest neighbours
- Best practice: What it is, what it isn’t
- Scientific Committee: ‘EMCDDA work programme grows in strength and quality’
- New prize for top scientific papers
Drugnet Europe is also available in downloadable PDF format, for printing or offline browsing.
Drugnet Europe is the EMCDDA's newsletter launched in September 1996. The newsletter provides regular and succint information on the Centre's projects and activities to a broad readership.
Page last updated: Thursday, 24 March 2011