Significant changes in drug use patterns in recent years, such as the current opioid epidemic in USA, have led to a growing interest in investigating new, fast and efficient tools that can monitor drug use and trends in a community. Wastewater-based epidemiology satisfies this need of quick and objective testing of drug consumption within a particular geographical area by analyzing human excretion products (biomarkers) in wastewater. The concentrations of the biomarkers in wastewater have to be normalized to be able to compare different sites due to variations in populations. Currently, there is not a commonly accepted normalization factor.  We developed two analytical methods in wastewater samples. One method allowed the determination of tobacco (cotinine), cocaine (benzoylecognine, cocaethylene, and cocaine), amphetamines (methamphetamine, MDMA, MDA and amphetamine), opioids (6-monoacetilmorphine, morphine, codeine, oxymorphone, oxycodone, hydromorphone, hydrocodone, fentanyl, norfentanyl, methadone, EDDP) and cannabis (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol and 11-nor-9-carboxy-tetrahydrocannabinol) biomarkers in 50 mL of wastewater, achieving a limit of quantification (LOQ) of 5-10 ng/L. The wastewater samples were filtered and extracted via Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) and analyzed by Liquid Chromatography tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) with electrospray ionization in positive-ion mode, monitoring two transitions per compound.  The second method determined creatinine, a breakdown product of muscle metabolism commonly used as normalization factor in urine, in 0.2 mL of wastewater. Creatinine was analyzed using a simple dilution and vial filtration by LC-MS/MS. The LOQ was 0.01mg/L. These methods were applied to 48 wastewater samples collected from 6 treatment plants in New York City (The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan) throughout the course of one year. The most frequently detected drug group was cocaine, followed by tobacco, opiates, amphetamines and cannabis. Creatinine normalizations were compared to cotinine normalization and to non-normalized values. This study provided a rapid and solid mean to track drug trends in different boroughs within New York City.

Wastewater-based epidemiology of tobacco, prescription opioids and drugs of abuse in New York City

256th National Meeting (2018)

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