LEGAL, ILLEGAL CHEMICALS

Wastewater Can Provide Snapshot Of What People Are Taking, Scientists Say

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 identify any single
person as a drug user. But it would help federal law enforcement and
other agencies track the spread of dangerous drugs, such as
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 methamphetamine levels were virtually nonexistent in some
smaller Midwestern locales, said Jennifer Field, the lead researcher
and a professor of environmental toxicology at Oregon State.

The ingredient Americans consume and excrete the most is 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 relationship 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. Almost 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 different drugs.
Field said researchers can't calculate how many people in a town are
using 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 a key tool currently used by drug
abuse researchers -- self-reported drug questionnaires --
underestimates 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.

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. The EPA will "flush out the details" on testing, Benjamin
Grumbles joked. The EPA assistant administrator said the agency is
already looking at the problem of potential harm to rivers and lakes
from legal pharmaceuticals.