VTEI / methamphetamine

methamphetamine

Wastewater based epidemiology, determination of selected illicit drugs and Covid-19 pandemic

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The World Health Organization (WHO) declared an outbreak of a global health emergency on 30th January 2020 and a pandemic caused by Covid-19 in March of the same year. In our paper, we tried to find out if and how this situation affected drug consumption from the perspective of wastewater analysis. We compared the results of weekly sampling events from 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, which took place at approximately the same period of the year, but in 2020, 2021, and 2022 were affected by the state of emergency and other pandemic-related measures. We monitored the concentration of selected drugs – THC, methamphetamine, MDMA, cocaine, and some of their metabolites (amphetamine and benzoylecgonine) in wastewater samples taken at the inflow to wastewater treatment plants. According to our measurements, virtually all monitored drugs experienced changes in their consumption.

Use of wastewater­‑based epidemiology for monitoring of illicit drugs consumption in Czech and international context

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This paper presents a brief summary of information about the project Determination of the amount of illicit drugs and their metabolites in municipal wastewater – new tool for obtaining of complementary data on illicit drug consumption in the Czech Republic and about the 2nd International Conference on “Wastewater‑based drug epidemiology“, which was held from 11.–15. 10. 2015 in Ascona, Switzerland.