AlterNet: Sewage as a Measure of Society's Drug Use

[marmar]

Sewage as a Measure of Society's Drug Use

By Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet. Posted January 15, 2010.

Testing municipal wastewater for drugs may be the next big thing in public health research. The methodology will likely confirm the universality of drug use.




All kinds of people use illegal drugs, all over the country -- in urban, suburban, ex-urban, and rural areas. Yet our imperfect methods for gauging community drug use disproportionately represent cities and often leave out the highest-risk populations, giving a skewed picture of who uses what types of drugs where.

The answer, oddly enough, may reside in shit. After all, everything that comes in must come out, so using human waste as a measure of society's health makes sense.

Drug epidemiologists are particularly excited by a study published last year in the journal Addiction which tested untreated wastewater in municipal plants throughout the state of Oregon for traces of cocaine, methamphetamine, and Ecstasy.

The Oregon study is not the first to test wastewater for drugs, but it's the first to use the methodology to spatially map drug prevalence. And its most exciting result is likely that it shows just how geographically widespread drug use is. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/145069/sewage_as_a_measure_of_society%27s_drug_use

[bemildred]

1. They ought not leave out all the happy pills that people take legally either.

And probably ought to include nicotine and alcohol in the mix to get a real picture of the land of pharmaceutical happiness.