Spotlight: A Closer Look at Sewage
 Dr. Jennifer Field (right) and student Aurea Chiaia look for illegal drugs in community sewage. |
|
We have long worried about what’s coming out of sewage treatment plants and the impact on the environment. But what about the things going in? Dr. Jennifer Field and her research team have developed a method to examine substances in community wastewater. Substances such as methamphetamine, an illegal drug that has had significant negative impact throughout Oregon, are found in all the wastewater samples Field has tested from Oregon. Up to 40% of methamphetamine passes through the body in an unchanged state and exits in urine. Another portion of the methamphetamine is altered by the body and exits the body as metabolites. Field examines wastewater samples for both unaltered methamphetamine and its metabolites. Knowing the concentration of methamphetamine in a community’s waste water system can provide information about amount of drug use within that community, a community drug test of sorts. Traditionally, health officials relied on data from emergency rooms, poison control centers, law enforcement, and self-reporting from drug users. It can be months to years before this data can be consolidated and analyzed by epidemiologists. The analysis method developed by Field’s research team provides rapid, near real-time data about drug use in communities. It is simple and requires practically no processing of wastewater samples except to separate solids from the liquid. The liquid portion is injected directly into analytical instruments. The wastewater data will compliment the traditional epidemiological data and may also serve as an early warning for health officials looking for changes in local drug use patterns. Any community with a wastewater treatment system can be analyzed. In fact, Field has samples from some communities with populations as low as 500 people. She hopes to get a snapshot of drug use with samples coming in from about one hundred communities across Oregon. Methamphetamine is not the only substance this method can detect. Field’s lab can detect metabolites of cocaine, LSD, ecstasy (MDMA), prescription drugs such as hydrocodone, oxycodone, and methadone, as well as caffeine, cotenine (a nicotine metabolite) and creatinine, a substance present in everyone’s urine. The last substance, creatinine, may eventually be used as a way to normalize for the number of people using a community’s wastewater system. These statistics can be used to track transient populations such as commuters, which leave one community to fill another and hence, use their wastewater treatment facilities. Other media coverage
|
|
