An employee of the TU Dresden fills wastewater samples in the laboratory in Dresden on Friday.
Image: Etienne Lehnen
A laboratory in Dresden is studying drug consumption among Germans – based on the residues in wastewater. The analyzes show that certain substances are consumed a lot where they are easy to get to.
In his laboratory in Dresden, Reinhard Oertel has set up plastic bottles with gray broth. Someone marked a date on the labels with a felt-tip pen. Oertel unscrews the cap of a bottle; the cloudy mixture smells like a latrine. No wonder, these are wastewater samples from Saarland. “There are much worse things.” Oertel should know. In his laboratory at the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology, he has been examining wastewater for years in addition to urine samples from patients at the university hospital. Sometimes for traces of antibiotics or other medicines, once a year for traces of German drug consumption.
Every year the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) publishes the European drug report, which shows which cities consume what the most. The authority based in Lisbon also relies on wastewater analysis. The process complements surveys in which people may not answer truthfully – after all, it involves illegal substances. Sewage doesn’t lie, it just stinks. Cocaine, heroin, ecstasy or crystal meth: everything that you breathe through your nose, smoke into your lungs or inject into your veins has to come out of your body again. Traces of the substances can be found in feces and especially in urine, which can sweeten a moment and ruin a life.
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