Testing at 96 Oregon sewage plants shows meth, cocaine and ecstasy
by Scott Learn
Friday July 24, 2009, 7:00 PM

As Tour de France riders can attest, one way to figure out whether someone is using illegal drugs is to do a urinalysis.

That isn't possible, of course, at the level of whole cities or towns.

Or maybe it is.

Last year, researchers at Oregon State University, the University of Washington and McGill University took one-day samples from 96 Oregon sewage treatment plants that volunteered to participate. They tested for the presence of chemicals indicating methamphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy or MDMA. Then they estimated the daily drug load per person for each community.



Cocaine showed up in 80 percent of the communities tested. Ecstasy, the one-time party drug now spreading to other venues, in about 40 percent. And meth appeared in every test, from Oregon's smallest towns to its biggest cities.

The researchers, who released their results earlier this month, oppose comparing communities by their results -- it was just a one-day snapshot, March 4, 2008, to be precise. But they are doing yearlong testing now at 20 plants, 10 in Oregon and 10 in Washington, that should produce more representative findings open to comparison.

Still, the results of the one-day study are a reminder of the popularity of illegal drugs, in this case three destructive stimulants, said Caleb Banta-Green, a drug epidemiologist at the University of Washington's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute and the study's lead author.

"Let's stop trying to pretend it's somebody else's problem, or a problem somewhere else," Banta-Green said. "There is drug use in every community."

ILLEGAL DRUGS IN WASTEWATER

A one-day sample of wastewater at 96 treatment plants in Oregon tested for chemicals indicating the presence of methamphetamine, ecstasy and cocaine.

In top third for all three drugs:
Portland
Eugene/Springfield
Grand Ronde
Gresham
Rockaway Beach

In top third for two drugs:
Ashland (ecstasy, cocaine)
Bend (ecstasy, cocaine)
Brooks (meth, cocaine)
Junction City (meth, ecstasy)
Pendleton (ecstasy, cocaine)
Redmond (meth, ecstasy)
Toledo (meth, cocaine)
Woodburn (meth, cocaine)

No detectable ecstasy or cocaine:
Coquille
Elgin
Garibaldi
Joseph
Powers
Veneta
Waldport
Wallowa

- Scott Learn



The study, following similar work in Europe but cutting edge in the United States, amounted to a trial run of community-wide drug testing. It could give social scientists, treatment workers and police a more precise look at drug use trends.

Today there are national and state surveys of drug use among teenagers and adults. But they're expensive. They count on people telling the truth. And they don't have big enough sample sizes to define drug use in smaller communities.

Admissions data from public addiction treatment programs capture mostly poor people. Death records cover everyone, eventually, but they catch drug use years or decades after people start using.

Testing at wastewater plants could piggyback on testing the plants are already doing for regulatory purposes, the researchers say. That would provide a real-time look at how drug use ebbs and flows and which communities seem to have the biggest problems.

"We could combine it with what we already analyze to give us a better picture of illicit drug abuse," said Karen Wheeler, addictions policy and program administrator for Oregon's Department of Human Services. "It's very promising."

Detailed results from the study, published in the journal Addiction, are intriguing: Portland was among five communities whose estimated daily use hit the top third for all three drugs. So was much smaller Rockaway Beach.

There was no ecstasy or cocaine detected in Garibaldi, but it fell in the top third for methamphetamine. College town Corvallis was in the middle third for all three drugs. And college town Ashland fell in the top third for ecstasy and cocaine. So did Pendleton.

But with just one day's worth of results, conclusions from those numbers are statistically shaky, the researchers said: "Particularly for smaller places, you could have a rave in one community in one day and that could make a significant difference," Banta-Green said.

Broadly, the results followed known patterns of drug use -- higher in urban areas for cocaine and ecstasy and across-the-board for methamphetamine. That gives the researchers confidence in the wastewater-test method at a large-scale level.

SEE ALL RESULTS HERE

To go deeper, scientists need to sample more frequently and make sure that population estimates -- key to estimating per person use -- are comparable between communities, said Jennifer Field, an Oregon State chemistry professor and one of the study's five authors.

Tourists and commuting workers add complexity, Field said. So do differences in sewage system design.

"We understand the desire to want to discriminate and compare," she said, "but we've got some heavy lifting ahead of us."

Scott Learn; scottlearn@news.oregonian.com


http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/i ... ge_pl.html