DRUG TEST ON SEWAGE PROFILES WHOLE CITY

WASHINGTON -- Researchers have figured out how to give an entire
community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a
city's sewer plant.

The test wouldn't be used to finger any single person as a drug user.
But it would help federal law enforcement and other agencies track the
spread of dangerous drugs, like methamphetamines, across the country.

Oregon State University scientists tested 10 unnamed American cities
for remnants of drugs, both legal and illegal, from wastewater
streams. They were able to show that they could get a good snapshot of
what people are taking.

"It's a community urinalysis," said Caleb Banta-Green, a University of
Washington drug abuse researcher who was part of the Oregon State
team. The scientists presented their results Tuesday at a meeting of
the American Chemical Society in Boston.

Two federal agencies have taken samples from U.S. waterways to see if
drug testing a whole city is doable, but they haven't gotten as far as
the Oregon researchers.

One of the early results of the new study showed big differences in
methamphetamine use city to city. One urban area with a gambling
industry had meth levels more than five times higher than other
cities. Yet there was virtually no meth in some smaller Midwestern
locales, said Jennifer Field, the lead researcher and a professor of
environmental toxicology at Oregon State.

The drug Americans consume and excrete the most was caffeine, Field
said.

Cities in the experiment ranged from 17,000 to 600,000 in population,
but Field declined to identify them, saying that could harm her
relationships with the sewage plant operators.

She plans to start a survey for drugs in the wastewater of at least 40
Oregon communities.

The science behind the testing is simple. Nearly every drug -- legal
and illicit -- that people take leaves the body. That waste goes into
toilets and then into wastewater treatment plants.

"Wastewater facilities are wonderful places to understand what humans
consume and excrete," Field said.

In the study presented Tuesday, one teaspoon of untreated sewage water
from each of the cities was tested for 15 drugs. Field said
researchers can't calculate how many people in a town use drugs.

She said that one fairly affluent community scored low for illicit
drugs except for cocaine. Cocaine and ecstasy tended to peak on
weekends and drop on weekdays, she said, while methamphetamine and
prescription drugs were steady throughout the week.

Field said her study suggests that self-reported drug questionnaires
underestimate drug use.

"We have so few indicators of current use," said Jane Maxwell of the
Addiction Research Institute at the University of Texas, who wasn't
part of the study. "This could be a very interesting new indicator."

David Murray, chief scientist for U.S. Office of National Drug Control
Policy, said the idea interests his agency too.

Murray said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is testing
federal wastewater samples just to see if that's a good method for
monitoring drug use. But he didn't know how many tests were conducted
or where.