Illicit Drugs in Municipal Sewage

Even though a body of data on the environmental occurrence of medicinal, government-approved ("ethical") pharmaceuticals has been growing over the last two decades (the focus of this book), nearly nothing is known about the disposition of illicit (illegal) drugs in the environment. Whether illicit drugs are similarly discharged to and survive in the environment (as discussed for medicinal drugs in the previous chapters of this book), and i f so, whether they have adverse effects on native biota, is completely unknown. Regardless, with the newly acquired ability of environmental chemists to monitor for medicinal drugs in environmental samples, science is now afforded the rare opportunity to simultaneously advance the understanding of a pollution process (i.e., the inadvertent discharge of illicit drugs to the environment via their purposeful use) and to also have the ability to impact public discourse and social policy on a highly controversial subject— namely, the pervasive manufacture, trade, and use of illegal drugs and abused controlled substances. The idea proposed in this chapter provides a rare bridge between the environmental and social sciences. The central aspect to the proposal centers on the use of non-intrusive drug monitoring at sewage treatment facilities and the use of the resulting non-incriminating data to determine collective drug usage parameters at the community level as well as to provide exposure data for the aquatic realm. This is the first feasible approach to obtaining real-time data that truly reflects community-wide usage of drugs — while concurrently assuring the inviolable confidentiality of every individual. At the same time, this approach yields environmental data for a class of potential pollutants never before considered as such. This proposal, which merely capitalizes on science's existing technical capabilities in analytical chemistry, is ground-breaking in its parallel objectives of (i) advancing our understanding of the intimate, immediate, and inseparable connection between humans and their environment (through personal use of chemicals), and (ii) furthering a national debate regarding the use/abuse of illicit and recreational drugs; any national discussion on the purported adverse effects of illicit drugs on a wide spectrum of societal concerns and issues should be helped with the availability of hard data regarding usage. In this sense, the capability outlined here is unique in its purpose of linking social discourse with the furthering of our understanding of environmental processes (such as fate and effects of pollutants). Implementation of this proposal on either limited local levels, nationwide, or internationally could provide a radically innovative approach and totally new dimension to the decadesold quest of understanding the overall issue of illicit drug use as well as informing the public on the perceived widespread use and the many purported consequences of illicit/recreational drugs.