Friday, July 17. 2009

Mapping Drug Use by Sampling Wastewater

That's what they did in Oregon. Ninety-six communities in the state shared water samples with researchers to look for the "waste" from drug use.

Researchers from the University of Washington, McGill University and Oregon State University collected single-day samples looking for evidence of methamphetamine, cocaine, and "ecstasy" or MDMA. The analytical tools were developed at OSU.

"This work is the first to demonstrate the use of wastewater samples for spatial analyses, a relatively simple and cost-effective approach to measuring community drug use," said Caleb Banta-Green, lead author of the paper and epidemiologist at the University of Washington Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute.

The results: "...the index loads of BZE were significantly higher in urban areas and below the level of detection in some rural areas. Methamphetamine was present in all municipalities, rural and urban. MDMA or ecstasy was at quantifiable levels in less than half of the communities, with a significant trend toward higher index loads in more urban areas."

- Escience

Posted by Adena Schutzberg at 09:03 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

No comments

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to	[ Top level ]
Comment	Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_. Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:
	Remember Information?   Subscribe to this entry