Assessment of total uncertainty in cocaine and benzoylecgonine wastewater load measurements

Mathieu, Christoph; Rieckermann, Jörg; Berset, Jean-Daniel; Schürch, Stefan; Brenneisen, Rudolf (2011). Assessment of total uncertainty in cocaine and benzoylecgonine wastewater load measurements. Water research, 45(20), pp. 6650-60. Amsterdam: Elsevier 10.1016/j.watres.2011.09.049

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To check the effectiveness of campaigns preventing drug abuse or indicating local effects of efforts against drug trafficking, it is beneficial to know consumed amounts of substances in a high spatial and temporal resolution. The analysis of drugs of abuse in wastewater (WW) has the potential to provide this information. In this study, the reliability of WW drug consumption estimates is assessed and a novel method presented to calculate the total uncertainty in observed WW cocaine (COC) and benzoylecgonine (BE) loads. Specifically, uncertainties resulting from discharge measurements, chemical analysis and the applied sampling scheme were addressed and three approaches presented. These consist of (i) a generic model-based procedure to investigate the influence of the sampling scheme on the uncertainty of observed or expected drug loads, (ii) a comparative analysis of two analytical methods (high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry), including an extended cross-validation by influent profiling over several days, and (iii) monitoring COC and BE concentrations in WW of the largest Swiss sewage treatment plants. In addition, the COC and BE loads observed in the sewage treatment plant of the city of Berne were used to back-calculate the COC consumption. The estimated mean daily consumed amount was 107 ± 21 g of pure COC, corresponding to 321 g of street-grade COC.

Item Type:	Journal Article (Original Article)
Division/Institute:	04 Faculty of Medicine > Pre-clinic Human Medicine > BioMedical Research (DBMR) > DBMR Forschung Mu35 > Forschungsgruppe Phytopharmakologie, Bioanalytik & Pharmakokinetik [discontinued] 04 Faculty of Medicine > Pre-clinic Human Medicine > BioMedical Research (DBMR) > DBMR Forschung Mu35 > Forschungsgruppe Phytopharmakologie, Bioanalytik & Pharmakokinetik [discontinued] 08 Faculty of Science > Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences (DCBP)
UniBE Contributor:	Mathieu, Christoph (A), Schürch, Stefan, Brenneisen, Rudolf Max
ISSN:	0043-1354
Publisher:	Elsevier
Language:	English
Submitter:	Factscience Import
Date Deposited:	04 Oct 2013 14:21
Last Modified:	29 Mar 2023 23:32
Publisher DOI:	10.1016/j.watres.2011.09.049
PubMed ID:	22048016
Web of Science ID:	000298124500005
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/6996 (FactScience: 212131)