Centazzo Nicole, Frederick Bonnie-Marie, Jacox Alethea, Cheng Shu-Yuan, Concheiro-Guisan Marta
Department of Sciences, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA.
Forensic Sci Res. 2019 May 31;4(2):152-167. doi: 10.1080/20961790.2019.1609388. eCollection 2019.
According to current surveys and overdoses data, there is a drug crisis in the USA. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is an evolving discipline that analyses wastewater samples to detect drugs and metabolites to estimate drug consumption in a certain community. This study demonstrates how drug relative presence could be tracked by testing wastewater, providing real-time results, in different boroughs in New York City throughout 1 year. We developed and fully validated two analytical methods, one for 21 drugs and metabolites, including nicotine, cocaine, amphetamines, opioids and cannabis markers; and another for the normalization factor creatinine. Both methods were performed by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) using positive electrospray ionization, achieving a limit of quantification of 5-10 ng/L for drugs and metabolites, and 0.01 mg/L for creatinine. These methods were applied to 48 one-time grab wastewater samples collected from six wastewater treatment plants in New York City (Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn), eight different times throughout 2016, before and after major holidays, including Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labour Day and New Year's. In this study, the drug group normalized concentrations present in the wastewater samples, in decreasing order, were cocaine, nicotine, opioids, cannabis and amphetamines. When looking at individual compounds, the one with the highest normalized concentration was benzoylecgonine (BE), followed by cotinine, morphine and 11--9-carboxy-tetrahydrocannabinol (THCCOOH). To estimate community use, these concentrations were multiplied by the corresponding correction factor, and the most present were THCCOOH, followed by BE, cotinine and morphine. When comparing the treatment plants by drug group (nicotine, cocaine, amphetamines, opioids and cannabis), samples collected from The Bronx had the highest normalized concentrations for nicotine, cocaine and opioids; The Bronx and Manhattan for cannabis; and Manhattan and Queens for amphetamines. In most of the cases, no effect due to holiday was observed. This study provides the first snapshot of drug use in New York City and how that changes between key calendar dates employing wastewater analysis.
根据当前的调查和过量用药数据，美国存在药物危机。基于废水的流行病学（WBE）是一门不断发展的学科，它通过分析废水样本以检测药物和代谢物，从而估算某个社区的药物消费量。本研究展示了如何通过检测废水来追踪药物的相对存在情况，在一整年的时间里为纽约市不同行政区提供实时结果。我们开发并全面验证了两种分析方法，一种用于检测21种药物和代谢物，包括尼古丁、可卡因、苯丙胺、阿片类药物和大麻标志物；另一种用于检测归一化因子肌酐。两种方法均采用正电喷雾电离的液相色谱串联质谱法（LC-MS/MS）进行，药物和代谢物的定量限为5-10 ng/L，肌酐的定量限为0.01 mg/L。这些方法应用于从纽约市（曼哈顿、布朗克斯、皇后区和布鲁克林）的六个污水处理厂采集的48个一次性抓取废水样本，在2016年全年的八个不同时间进行，包括阵亡将士纪念日、7月4日、劳动节和新年等主要节日之前和之后。在本研究中，废水中样本中药物组归一化浓度从高到低依次为可卡因、尼古丁、阿片类药物、大麻和苯丙胺。当查看单个化合物时，归一化浓度最高的是苯甲酰芽子碱（BE），其次是可替宁、吗啡和11-9-羧基-四氢大麻酚（THCCOOH）。为了估算社区使用量，这些浓度乘以相应的校正因子，含量最高的是THCCOOH，其次是BE、可替宁和吗啡。当按药物组（尼古丁、可卡因、苯丙胺、阿片类药物和大麻）比较污水处理厂时，从布朗克斯采集的样本中尼古丁、可卡因和阿片类药物的归一化浓度最高；布朗克斯和曼哈顿的大麻样本；曼哈顿和皇后区的苯丙胺样本。在大多数情况下，未观察到节假日带来的影响。本研究提供了纽约市药物使用的首张快照，以及通过废水分析在关键日历日期之间药物使用情况的变化。
