Analysis of cocaine and nicotine metabolites in wastewater by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. Cross abuse index patterns on a major community

Abstract

HIGHLIGHTSCross abuse index patterns on licit and illicit drugs by means of sewage assessment Data about cocaine and nicotine consumption from a Portuguese population Co-evaluation of cocaine abuse estimates based on local drug purity levels ABSTRACT A method based on sample preparation by solid phase extraction and analysis by liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry was validated and used for simultaneous analysis of cocaine, benzoylecgonine and cotinine in samples collected at the major wastewater treatment plant in the city of Lisbon. The aim was to estimate the consumption of both cocaine and nicotine in this community and establish an index involving both drugs supported by the relevance of nicotine as a significant anthropogenic marker. The study was made on two different week days during a month in order to evaluate patterns of consumption outside weekends. Cocaine and nicotine ingestion levels were backcalculated and expressed as mass of pure drugs consumed per day and per 1000 inhabitants (mean: 0.604 g and 5.860 g respectively). Cocaine was also expressed on the basis of local drug purity levels (33.7%) with a corresponding increase on dose assessments, and community drug abuse profiles. The authors sustain that this approach should always be included in drug studies of this kind allowing a better drug abuse assessment. No significant different patterns of consumption were obtained during the working days studied with the exception of one case coincident with a national holiday that showed an increased typical profile found on other non-working day studies, namely weekends. A fairly significant relationship was found between nicotine and cocaine consumption that should be further evaluated in future studies. Pharmacokinetic considerations were made and proposed for cocaine assessment based on the impact on back calculations after common simultaneous consumption of cocaine and ethanol.

National monitoring of nicotine use in Czech and Slovak Republic based on wastewater analysis

“…Generally, it can be stated that the average cotinine concentrations in wastewater in cities with over 80,000 inhabitants (Prague-2810 ng/L, Bratislava-2270 ng/L, Košice-1170 ng/L, České Budejovice-2720 ng/L a Nitra-3490 ng/L) (Table 3) correspond with the results obtained in other professional studies (Ort et al 2014;Mackuľak et al 2014;Thomas et al 2012), which measured average cotinine concentrations in cities like Zurich, Adelaide, and Lisbon in a range of 2590-3500 ng/L. In the study of Lopes et al (2014), a monitoring of cotinine was conducted for a period of 1 month and similarly to our data, it was found that the concentration of the compound in the wastewater varies considerably (1130-3500 ng/L). They also point out that the increase in concentration may occur during weekends and public or religious holidays due to significant migration of urban residents.…”

“…Cotinine (CT) is afterwards further metabolized into several submetabolites, meaning that only 10-15 % of consumed nicotine is excreted as cotinine (Lopes et al 2014). Currently, several studies have addressed the occurrence of cotinine in the environment.…”

“…Lopes et al study (2014), which deals with the consumption of drugs, cocaine, and nicotine, based on wastewater analysis, uses a correction factor for the back-calculating of nicotine consumption from cotinine loads. According to Chen et al (2013) and Lopes et al (2014), it was calculated from the Eq. …”

“…Therefore, in the case of nicotine, Lopez et al (Lopes et al 2014) focused mainly on its stable metabolite cotinine. It is a considerably more stable molecule than the parent compound itself, which is also reflected in its concentration in the effluent (often exceeding the value of 1000 ng/L) (Lopes et al 2014;Chen et al 2013;Buerge et al 2008;Castiglioni et al 2015). According to the study of Chen et al (2013), cotinine may be degraded to some extent in the sewage system, where the residence time is an important factor.…”

Estimation of caffeine intake from analysis of caffeine metabolites in wastewater

“…This approach, called wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), has been mainly applied in the last decade for estimating illicit drug consumption (Baker et al, 2014; Ort et al, 2014; Thomas et al, 2012; Zuccato et al, 2008) and more recently has also been proposed for the quantitative measurement of lifestyle habits such as tobacco and alcohol use, exposure to environmental and food contaminants or factors related to health and illness in a community (Lopes et al, 2014;Reid et al, 2011;Rodríguez-Álvarez et al, 2015;Rousis et al, 2017;Thomas and Reid, 2011; Yang et al, 2015). The main advantage of WBE is that it provides objective, up-to-date information about the use of these substances in a population and can therefore complement current epidemiological methods.…”