Your Sewer on Drugs

Sewage is more than just filth. It’s evidence of our worst habits, everything from caffeine to cocaine, all ingested and flushed down the toilet. Now scientists are using wastewater to drug-test entire cities, and the results are sobering

By Eric Hagerman Posted 02.21.2008 at 3:51 pm 11 Comments

Knowing where in the country heroin use is highest, for example, could help Drug Enforcement Administration agents target their investigations or track major suppliers. Local police might be interested in subtler differences. If daily monitoring shows a spike in the standard ratio of cocaine, it means that somebody probably flushed his stash down the toilet. Monitoring day-to-day changes could also turn up clues about the activity of pharmaceutical plants if scientists tested for by-products that they flush.

So far, the Office of National Drug Control Policy is proceeding cautiously. “We’d really like to have something biometric,” David Murray says, speaking about the limitations of drug surveys. “If you’re serious about trying to make a difference, you’ve got to have the best science available to you.” But his office has offered only a tepid endorsement of sewer epidemiology. Field, Fanelli, Rieckermann and Daughton have all received probing calls from the White House about new drug-testing methods. In spring 2006, the ONDCP even conducted a pilot study in which it sampled sewage at 34 plants in various cities. Murray won’t divulge the locations or the findings, but he says that the ONDCP may work with the EPA to implement a strictly voluntary monitoring campaign for cocaine.

But it seems that when the ONDCP calls offering to upend the self-image of a big city with a radical new measurement method, that city recoils. Murray wanted to include San Diego in the pilot study, but the formal request prompted a formal denial from the mayor’s office. Then, when Rieckermann showed up with his modest proposal of a few test sites, he got the same answer.

His results, he freely admits, can be jarring. Rieckermann’s tests offer few excuses, and in the future he will correlate that data with sociological data about income levels and race. And he’s doing it at the neighborhood level, which he believes is the only way to get truly useful information. Of course, whether cities are ready for what Rieckermann finds is another question.

Contributing editor Eric Hagerman is co-author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.

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11 Comments

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daveywavey

02/29/08 at 6:11 pm

daveyWavey

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jabailo

03/23/08 at 3:56 pm

I just finished reading "The Ghost Map", a true epidemiology detective story to figure out what was causing cholera outbreaks in London during the mid-1800s. Turns out, it was a common well into which sewage had leaked.

We certainly live in a "global village" with stranger and more persistent disease.

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themarla

03/29/08 at 3:08 am

Oh, please come to Fresno, CA. I can almost guarantee that this entire city is being "whacked out" on chemicals, which leaves them oblivious to what is taking place right under their noses.
Think I'm kidding? I wish I was.

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dontbother

04/18/08 at 1:45 am

This might be an interesting article, but I will never know. Instead of simply publishing the story and taking the advertising revenue, Popular Science has chosen to (as many other sites do) spread the article over several pages to artificially over-inflate their page views and advertisement impressions.

If you made it through this article, you are a stupid victim of an unimaginative advertising scheme.

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Hitari0

05/15/08 at 10:13 pm

Could they simplify it to one page, perhaps?

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kardelen133 (not verified)

05/26/08 at 11:24 am

Hi All
I am a huge supporter of small wind, but I cannot think of many applicable situations for this design. This turbine seems to produce a pretty small amount of power for it's size and logistical concerns. A balloon holding up the other end of a string of turbines?? Good luck passing that through planning and zoning. I also believe that maintenence would be much more frequent with multiple turbines than some simpler designs. It's a cool idea, but before this guy spends much more time and money, he should pick up his guitar again.
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thanks.

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worldcommander

05/30/08 at 3:28 pm

dontbother said "if you made it through this article, you are a stupid victim of an unimaginative advertising scheme."

Wow, ease up salty! This is no different than the ads on the pages of almost every published magazine, the commercials between segments of the news, or the billboards on the way to some far off destination. Stupid is being offended or surprised they're there. Stupid is also the advertiser that thinks anyone is paying attention to the ads in the first place. Stupid is hardly anybody that made it to page seven of the article and didn't feel victimized by Popular Science.

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ilahilere

07/23/08 at 4:49 pm

ilahiler
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kraloyun

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ilahilere

07/23/08 at 4:53 pm

This turbine seems to produce a pretty small amount of power for it's size and logistical concerns. A balloon holding up the other end of a string of turbines??gazete okurüya gsmodelleri1 out of 2 people found this comment helpful

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