Beneficial test or privacy infringement?

[Shelli]

Teaspoon of unine can drug test an entire city (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20380094/wid/11915773?gt1=10316) :drugs:

"WASHINGTON - Researchers have figured out how to give an entire community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a city’s sewer plant.

The test wouldn’t be used to finger any single person as a drug user. But it would help federal law enforcement and other agencies track the spread of dangerous drugs, like methamphetamines, across the country.

Oregon State University scientists tested 10 unnamed American cities for remnants of drugs, both legal and illegal, from wastewater streams. They were able to show that they could get a good snapshot of what people are taking.

“It’s a community urinalysis,” said Caleb Banta-Green, a University of Washington drug abuse researcher who was part of the Oregon State team. The scientists presented their results Tuesday at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.

Two federal agencies have taken samples from U.S. waterways to see if drug testing a whole city is doable, but they haven’t gotten as far as the Oregon researchers."

Read on (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20380094/wid/11915773?gt1=10316) :user:

[livius drusus]

I vaguely recall reading about something similar done in Italy. Milan had monster amounts of cocaine in the sewers, iirc.

[Watser?]

I feel this strong inclination to pee in a bucket from now on and hand deliver it to the river.

And I don't even do any drugs :duh:
:larrybounce:

[lisarea]

Beneficial test, with some slippery slope potential. Testing at central facilities is one thing, but what about testing street by street or building by building?

[Watser?]

Yeah, I was thinking how do they define a 'community'?

[Uthgar the Brazen]

Beneficial test, with some slippery slope potential. Testing at central facilities is one thing, but what about testing street by street or building by building?

I give it all of 24 hours before it turns to just that. With special focus on...certain socioeconomic factors.

Personally, if they do that here, I'm going to start pouring gallons of PineSol and antifreeze down my toilet.

[lisarea]

Personally, if they do that here, I'm going to start pouring gallons of PineSol and antifreeze down my toilet.

Which leads me to a science question: Could they even distinguish between, say, meth that has been ingested and the discrete ingredients that would make meth?

[Shelli]

Good question.

[ms_ann_thrope]

I feel this strong inclination to pee in a bucket from now on and hand deliver it to the river.:glare: Please do not pollute!

I'd have to take another look at Greenwood to make sure that I'm not talking out my ass, but I'm fairly certain that one's 'reasonable expectation of privacy' would be greatly reduced once the toilet is flushed and one's waste is on its way into the sewer. Expectation of privacy might be greater for people with septic tanks, lol.

[beyelzu]

yeah, since i love freedom and all, im definitely not on board with this shit

[beyelzu]

I feel this strong inclination to pee in a bucket from now on and hand deliver it to the river.:glare: Please do not pollute!

I'd have to take another look at Greenwood to make sure that I'm not talking out my ass, but I'm fairly certain that one's 'reasonable expectation of privacy' would be greatly reduced once the toilet is flushed and one's waste is on its way into the sewer. Expectation of privacy might be greater for people with septic tanks, lol.

see, i dont care what the courts hold as being a reasonable expectation of privacy.

they think its ok to have a copyright law set for a billion years after death of the originator.

im not ok with that.

regardless of the courts position this stinks.

[Ensign Steve]

Yeah, I mean not just street to street or block to block, what about schools, dorms, barracks? I think I should start letting crack whores powder up in my place as a matter of charity. Then I'll always have an alibi. :)

[Stormlight]

One urban area with a gambling industry had meth levels more than five times higher than other cities. Yet methamphetamine levels were virtually nonexistent in some smaller Midwestern locales, said Jennifer Field, the lead researcher and a professor of environmental toxicology at Oregon State.

I'm shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!

The ingredient Americans consume and excrete the most was caffeine, Field said.

Welcome to the University of the Bleeding Obvious.

[Watser?]

:chin:
Usually they leave the bleeding obvious to the sociologists

[ms_ann_thrope]

see, i dont care what the courts hold as being a reasonable expectation of privacy.

they think its ok to have a copyright law set for a billion years after death of the originator.

im not ok with that.

regardless of the courts position this stinks.I figure that our sewage gets tested for all sorts of bacteria, parasites, and other nasties already, so I'm not terribly disturbed by the thought of adding drug testing at an aggregated municipal level. :shrug:

Testing of personally-identifiable samples I would have a problem with, at least without some sort of probable cause and a warrant.

To be safe on the safe side, we should just all pee in someone else's loo.

[JoeP]

As long as the data is available as a Google Maps overlay, netizens will be happy.

[The Lone Ranger]

Personally, if they do that here, I'm going to start pouring gallons of PineSol and antifreeze down my toilet.

Which leads me to a science question: Could they even distinguish between, say, meth that has been ingested and the discrete ingredients that would make meth?

It wouldn't be difficult to do in theory; in practice, it might be somewhat time- and labor-intensive. Using a radioimmune assay, for instance, you can test for a specific suite of very similar chemicals -- the metabolic breakdown products of methamphetamine, for instance. But doing an RIA is a time-consuming thing, as I know from considerable experience. An RIA designed to test for the metabolic breakdown products of methamphetamine would likely react to some of the ingredients used to make meth.

If you really wanted to distinguish between methamphetamine ingredients and breakdown products, you could probably do so with a gas chromatography analysis, but GC analyzers are rather expensive.


I don't know offhand what, exactly, are the metabolic breakdown products of methamphetamine, nor whether they're sufficiently similar to the original ingredients that both raw ingredients and breakdown products would give positive results on a standardized test for "methamphetamine" (certainly, if they're testing in the sewers, they're testing for methamphetamine breakdown products, not methamphetamine per se), but it wouldn't be surprising. I doubt that government agencies conducting such tests would be terribly interested in distinguishing between the ingredients and the breakdown products; suspiciously high levels of either would get their attention.



I understand that manufacture of methamphetamine involves the use of a considerable volume of chlorinated solvents and other compounds. I'm guessing that the waste is usually poured down the drain. If sewage contains unusual amounts of these compounds, that might make authorities suspicious. As I understand it, hydrochloric acid, anhydrous ammonia, drain cleaner, sulfuric acid, antifreeze and lye are some of the ingredients used in manufacturing meth, so if there are large amounts of any of these chemicals showing up in sewage, that might get the attention of the authorities. (In other words, I wouldn't pour lye or drain cleaner down the drain in an effort to confound the authorities -- it might well have the effect of making them suspicious that there's a meth lab in the neighborhood.)



Incidentally, United States Patent #20040146428 (http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20040146428.html) is for a strip that can be placed into a toilet bowl, and that will show a reaction to the metabolic breakdown products of various drugs. (The patent was filed in 2003.) The strip could be placed into a toilet just under the rim, where it wouldn't be immediately visible to someone who wasn't looking for it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if something like this starts showing up in workplaces before too long.

Cheers,

Michael