Special Issue. Testing the waters: A selection of papers from the first international multidisciplinary conference on detecting illicit drugs in wastewater

摘要

The chemical analysis of illicit drug excretion products in wastewater is rapidly establishing itself as a valuable new method for complementing existing approaches in monitoring patterns and trends of illicit drug use. These methods referred to as 'wastewater analysis' or 'wastewater-based epidemiology' were proposed as a New Non-Intrusive Tool to evaluate the use of illicit and misused drugs in a community by Christian Daughton in 2001. In 2005 it was implemented for the first time by Zuccato and co-workers in Italy, when cocaine use was estimated in several cities through measuring the urinary metabolite, benzoylecgonine, in wastewater. Later, the approach was rapidly extended to also include the main illicit drugs such as heroin, cannabis, and amphetamine-like stimulants. Since then this approach has been applied internationally in many countries to assess the use of illicit drugs in both local and national populations. It is remarkable to note that it is less than a decade since the feasibility of this method was first demonstrated, and yet during this time we have seen the emergence of a new scientific discipline. The potential of which is truly exciting as it provides a new and much needed tool for addressing a range of pressing information needs in this area which include: rapidly reporting on population level trends in illicit drug use, providing objective estimates of consumption, identifying the use of novel substances, and providing a 'hard' pre- and post-intervention measure for outcome studies. This development is celebrated in this issue of Science of the Total Environment where for the first time a learned journal has dedicated an entire issue to this area of rapidly developing science.