Drugs of abuse and their metabolites in the Ebro River basin: Occurrence in sewage and surface water, sewage treatment plants removal efficiency, and collective drug usage estimation

Illicit drugs in Canadian municipal wastewater and estimates of community drug use

“…In Europe, methamphetamine is generally present at lower concentrations (i.e. <10 ng/L) in untreated wastewater, but the concentrations of MDMA and amphetamine are comparable to the levels reported in the present study (Zuccato et al, 2005;Castiglioni et al, 2006;Postigo et al, 2010).…”

“…These concentrations are very similar to the range of concentrations of these compounds detected in untreated wastewater from WWTPs in the USA (Chiaia et al, 2008) and in Europe (Zuccato et al, 2005;Castiglioni et al, 2006;Mari et al, 2009;Postigo et al, 2010). Fig.…”

“…1). These ratios are markedly different from the ratios observed in untreated wastewater from cities in continental Europe (Zuccato et al, 2008a(Zuccato et al, , 2005Castiglioni et al, 2006;Mari et al, 2009;Postigo et al, 2010) and in the USA (Chiaia et al, 2008), Table 2 Target compounds and stable isotope surrogates surveyed in this study, with chemical formulas, the chromatographic retention times, the mass spectrometric SRM ion transitions, de-clustering potential (DP) and collision energies for analysis, and the limits of detection (LODs) and limits of quantitation (LOQs) for the target analytes dissolved in wastewater (ng/L) and adsorbed to particulates (ng/g dry weight).…”

“…Drug consumption can be estimated from data on the concentrations of the target compounds in untreated wastewater, the flow rates into municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), the population served by the WWTP, human excretion rates for the target compounds in urine, and estimates of the drug dose. This method has been used to estimate use patterns for drugs of abuse in continental Europe (Zuccato et al, 2005;Castiglioni et al, 2006;Mari et al, 2009;Postigo et al, 2010), in Wales (KasprzykHordern et al, 2009) and in Ireland (Bones et al, 2007). Recently, the concentrations of illicit drugs were determined in wastewater from municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in the USA (Chiaia et al, 2008;Bartelt-Hunt et al, 2009;Loganathan et al, 2009), although these studies did not include estimates of community drug consumption.…”

“…Wastewater samples were collected throughout the week to monitor for temporal changes in usage. Illicit drugs have been found in rivers and lakes (Postigo et al, 2010;Bartelt-Hunt et al, 2009;Zuccato et al, 2008b;Kasprzyk-Hordern et al, 2008;Castiglioni et al, 2008). Ineffective removal of illicit drugs during wastewater treatment may result in contamination of drinking water (Huerta-Fontela et al, 2008), or exposure of fish and other aquatic organisms in surface waters impacted by discharges from WWTPs (Postigo et al, 2010).…”