Main Category: Alcohol / Addiction / Illegal Drugs
Article Date: 27 Jul 2012 - 12:00 PDT
By analyzing the waste using urinary biomarkers, researchers can reliably detect actual drug consumption in cities. A large group of scientists has for the first time conducted a comparative study of illegal drug consumption in 19 European cities based on wastewater analysis. The findings are published in the specialist journal Science of the Total Environment.
The four Spanish cities, Barcelona, Castelló de la Plana, Santiago de Compostela and Valencia had a higher consumption of cannabis and cocaine compared with other drugs like ecstasy and methamphetamines.
The study was a collaboration of Research centers and universities from 11 European countries. The teams collected urban wastewater from 19 European cities during one week in March 2011 and used urinary biomarkers to test the samples for cocaine, amphetamines, ecstasy, cannabis and methamphetamines. The analysis enabled researchers to estimate each of the 19 cities' drug consumption. The teams normalized the results according to the size of the city investigated, so that larger cities like London or Barcelona could be directly compared with smaller cities like Castelló de la Plana or Santiago de Compostela.
According to the results, the highest consumption of cocaine in milligrams per day per 1,000 inhabitants was found in Antwerp, followed by Amsterdam, Valencia, Eindhoven and Barcelona. In Castelló, the consumption of cocaine is comparable with cities like Utrecht or London, and slightly higher than Santiago, which had the same level of consumption as Brussels, Milan or Paris. In contrast, cocaine consumption in Nordic countries was observed to be low in comparison. According to estimations, 365 kilograms of cocaine are consumed daily, which, according to the UN's Office of Drugs and Organized Crime relates to about 10 to 15% of the worldwide cocaine consumption.
Unlike cocaine, methamphetamines consumption was observed to be higher in North and North-western Europe, particularly in Scandinavia and the Czech Republic. The teams noted that drugs belonging to the group of amphetamines, methamphetamines and amphetamines were the main drugs found in European wastewater. Neither of these drugs were found in the wastewater from Castelló, whilst Barcelona's, Valencia's and Santiago's wastewater showed low to medium levels of these drugs, which were lower compared with the levels detected in the north of Europe.
The teams did not detect MDMA (Ecstasy) in Castelló, although they found that Valencia and Santiago had around half of the consumption of Barcelona. However, ecstasy consumption was much lower than compared with Holland and Belgium.
Unsurprisingly, the highest consumption of cannabis was found in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, followed by France and Spain. The researchers have taken Spain's strategic position in marijuana trafficking into account, which has expanded the cannabis market. The cannabis consumption in Barcelona, Castelló and Santiago was relatively high, and marginally higher compared to the consumption per capita in Valencia.
Drug consumption surveillance programs are very beneficial tools for developing efficient policing legislations, but also to assess the efficacy of current policies to tackle the drug addiction problem.
Prior to analyzing the wastewater, measuring drug consumption was typically based on surveys conducted in different sectors of society including consumers with different addiction levels, such as the general public. Researchers also used additional information from police data for drug seizures, data on hospital admissions and other medical data. However, these methods proved to be significantly unreliable, in particular with regard to illegal drug use, since these studies were based on surveys. Another negative factor for the traditional methods of measuring drug consumptions is that results are usually obtained on an annual basis and over a large geographical area, usually by state.
In contrast, the wastewater analysis approach of analyzing wastewater from water purification plants (EDAR) enabled the research centers to obtain reliable information of the overall consumption of investigated drugs in real-time.
According to project co-coordinator of the collaborative project, Kevin Thomas, a NIVA researcher, the wastewater analysis provides important information alongside current estimation methods. Thomas explains: "Via waste water investigation we can estimate a city's drug consumption. Furthermore, we can quickly measure changes in consumption habits over a short period of time. For example, we can determine if there has been a massive drug disposal via drainage when police raids or drugs seizes take place."
The same approach has already been applied to a second study that has been conducted in 2012 in several European cities, and can be used in any other country or city. The researchers conclude:
"With the necessary economic support, we have the opportunity to be able to better understand, for the first time, what worldwide drug consumption currently is, trends, or the introduction of new drugs onto the market via the study of biomarkers in waste waters."
Written by Petra Rattue
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today
Kevin V. Thomas, Lubertus Bijlsma, Sara Castiglioni, Adrian Covaci, Erik Emke, Roman Grabic, Félix Hernández, Sara Karolak, Barbara Kasprzyk-Hordern, Richard H. Lindberg, Miren Lopez de Alda, Axel Meierjohann, Christoph Ort, Yolanda Pico, José B. Quintana, Malcolm Reid, Jörg Rieckermann, Senka Terzic, Alexander L.N. van Nuijs, Pim de Voogt
Science of The Total Environment, July 2012, doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2012.06.069
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