Estimating cocaine consumption in the Brazilian Federal District (FD) by sewage analysis

Abstract

Este é o primeiro trabalho que relata a ocorrência de resíduos de cocaína (COC) e benzoilecgonina (BE) em amostras coletadas em seis estações de esgoto diferentes (ETE) instaladas no Distrito Federal (DF) do Brasil. As concentrações de BE nos afluentes de esgoto foram utilizadas para calcular o consumo de cocaína (kg ano -1 por 1000 habitantes) em cada uma das regiões atendidas pelas ETE, em duas campanhas de amostragem (março e junho de 2010). Dentre as ETE estudadas, amostras provenientes de Samambaia apresentaram as maiores concentrações (de 3866 a 2477 ng L -1 de BE e 805 a 579 ng L -1 de COC) e doses por habitante (mais de 13 doses habitante -1 por ano). A extrapolação para toda a população do DF indica um consumo anual alcançando 1,0 tonelada de cocaína base livre, ou 1,1 tonelada de cloridrato de cocaína. Este trabalho também aborda a influência da forma de apresentação da cocaína (base livre ou sal cloridrato) e a integração com resultados de perfil químico na busca de estimativas mais realistas, principalmente no que se refere aos pontos de vista da criminalística e da segurança pública. This is the first report on the occurrence of cocaine (COC) and benzoylecgonine (BE) residues in six samples collected from different wastewater treatment plants (WTP) located in the Brazilian Federal District (FD). Concentrations of BE in the influent sewage were used to calculate cocaine consumption (kg year -1 per 1000 inhabitants) for each region attended by the WTP from two sampling campaigns (March and June, 2010). Among the WTP studied, samples from Samambaia showed higher concentrations (from 3866 to 2477 ng L -1 of BE and 805 to 579 ng L -1 of COC) and doses per inhabitants (more than 13 doses inhabitant -1 per year). The extrapolation to the whole FD population points out to an annual consumption reaching 1.0 ton of free base cocaine, or 1.1 tons of cocaine hydrochloride. The work also addresses the influence of the cocaine presentation form (free base or hydrochloride) and the integration with chemical profiling results in a more realistic estimate, mainly concerning the viewpoints of forensics and law enforcement.

Estimation of illicit drug use in the main cities of Colombia by means of urban wastewater analysis

“…On the contrary, average loads of BE on Medellin (845 mg/day/1000inh) was higher than all studied European cities, with the only exception of the value found in Antwerp Zuid in 2013 that was of the same order. When comparing this data with countries or cities from outside Europe, the use of cocaine in Australia (Irvine et al, 2011;Lai et al, 2011) South Korea (Kim et al, 2015) and China (Khan et al, 2014;Lai et al, 2013) was lower, whereas average loads of BE in Brazil (Maldaner et al, 2012) and Martinique (Devault et al, 2014) (approximately 450 mg/day/ 1000inh, after re-calculation) were higher than in Bogotá, but generally did not exceed those observed in Medellin.…”

“…However, WBE has also been implemented in other continents such as Australia (Irvine et al, 2011;Prichard et al, 2012) and North America (Banta-Green et al, 2009;Devault et al, 2014;Metcalfe et al, 2010;Subedi and Kannan, 2014) and is starting to be applied in Asia (Khan et al, 2014;Kim et al, 2015;Lai et al, 2013). WBE has also been applied once in South America (Brazil) for the estimation of cocaine consumption (Maldaner et al, 2012).…”

Screening for Selected Human Pharmaceuticals and Cocaine in the Urban Streams of Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil

“…There has been a large amount of focus of late on the use of BE in untreated sewage as a biomarker for the estimation of COC use (Van Nuijs et al ., ; Thomas et al ., ), however, for this compound to be used as a biomarker there is a need for additional information such as high resolution flow data and an estimation of the population being served by the sewer network under investigation. Previously this has been performed in the Brazilian Federal District (BFD), where raw sewage was collected from the influent of WWTPs from six cities (Maldaner et al ., ). The concentrations of COC and BE in these raw sewage samples was between 174 and 3,700 ng/l and 660 and 4,800 ng/l, respectively, that are similar to those detected in Manaus's urban streams.…”

“…Maldaner et al . () calculated BE loads of between 17 and 300 g/day for the sewage samples collected from the BFD that compare with our estimations of 42 and 207 g/day for the final sampling point before the Rio Negro for Igarapé Mindu and Igarapé do 40. These compare with typical BE loads in Europe of between 9 and 330 g/day (Thomas et al ., ).…”

Mass spectrometric strategies for the investigation of biomarkers of illicit drug use in wastewater

“…The latter provided a means to estimate and critically assess the uncertainty related to the wastewater‐based estimates (Castiglioni et al, ). However, important WBE research has also been conducted in other continents such as Asia (Lai et al, ; Khan et al, ; Li et al, ; Kim et al, ), Australia (Irvine et al, ; Prichard et al, ; Lai et al, ; Tscharke et al, , ), North America (Banta‐Green et al, ; Burgard et al, ; Subedi & Kannan, ), and Central and South America (Maldaner et al, ; Devault et al, ; Voloshenko‐Rossin et al, ; Bijlsma et al, ). Furthermore, a recently published review on neuropsychiatric pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs in WWTPs (Asimakopoulos & Kannan, ) is recommended for readers interested.…”