Evaluation of Uncertainties Associated with the Determination of Community Drug Use through the Measurement of Sewage Drug Biomarkers

Abstract

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Occurrence and behavior of illicit drugs and metabolites in sewage water from the Spanish Mediterranean coast (Valencia region)

“…As previously mentioned, BE was the most abundant compound in all samples studied, maintaining a rather constant relative abundance with cocaine during all studied period. The average cocaine/BE ratio in all sewage waters included in this work was 0.30 ± 0.14, which is higher than the ratio ≤ 0.1 reported for human metabolism, but in agreement with ratios (0.1 -0.7) obtained from wastewater analysis of 21 STPs (Castiglioni et al 2013). Moreover, the highest concentrations of these compounds were commonly found on weekends, as illustrated by the data from samples collected from Saturday to Monday.…”

“…The highest uncertainty within this study seems to be related to the sampling (Ort et al 2010). In this work, sampling error was estimated to be relatively high (around 30%) (Castiglioni et al 2013) due to the time proportional sampling interval used (every hour). This uncertainty has been reduced for the studies performed in 2011 and 2012 by taking a sample every 15 min.…”

“…Amphetamine, methamphetamine, MDA, MDEA, MDMA and THC-COOH are generally stable up to 72 h at 4 °C (Castiglioni et al 2006). However cocaine, norcocaine and cocaethylene are not stable under these conditions (decrease > 10%), and can be transformed into BE and norBE through chemical hydrolysis (Castiglioni et al 2013). In this study, the bias due to cocaine transformation is expected to be relatively low as the estimated mean residence time of wastewater in the sewers investigated is 3 h and the conditions for sampling and sample storage minimize degradation of the selected compounds.…”

“…However, for the correct interpretation of these results it is important to take into account some of the uncertainties associated with the determination of illicit drugs in sewage (Castiglioni et al 2013;van Nuijs et al 2011b). …”

“…Some limitations of sewage water analysis such as the estimation of population sizes contributing to the samples in each catchment area, drug excretion and analytes stability in the sewage system have been discussed in the recent literature (Castiglioni et al 2013; Thomas et al 2012;Van Nuijs et al 2011b). Despite the limitations and uncertainties associated with sewage water analysis, interesting trends in drug use have been observed, with prominent increase related to particular celebrations (Harman et al 2011;Lai et al 2013aLai et al , 2013bvan Nuijs et al 2011a).…”