Action 3 News - Omaha, Nebraska News, Weather, and Sports | Flushed Out: Secrets of the Sewer
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Omaha, NE- Action 3 News flushes out the secrets of Omaha's sewers with a test never done before in Nebraska. Oregon State researchers are conducting a one of a kind drug test by uncovering what people put in the sewers, by way of the bathroom.
The Missouri River Wastewater Treatment plant treats 80 millions gallons of raw sewage every day. For our drug test, all researchers need is one teaspoon of raw sewage. It's in this one teaspoon we'll find out what kind of drugs people in omaha are using.
Oregon State scientists need a frozen sample from a 24 hour period. We picked a weekend Friday midnight to Saturday midnight. Dr. Jennifer Field's lab is the only one in the country flushing out sewer secrets in cities throughout the US. You could call it a community-wide urinalysis.
Dr. Field says, "What we're testing is an entire community's contribution via their toilets, not an individual's toilet." The science behind the drug test is simple, everything we take, whether it's legal or illegal leaves the body and ends up at the sewer plant.
Dr. Field says, "Our methodology is able to detect urine 1000fold diluted by the time it gets to wastewater treatment plants."
Here's what the test flushed out of Omaha.
The most abundant drugs are caffeine and nicotine.
Omaha's got a lot of coffee drinkers and smokers.
Not surprising, says the scientist, who ran the test five times and got the same results.
The next highest levels detected came from ephedrine. It is legally used as a decongestant for colds and allergies or illegally used to make meth.
Omaha also tested positive for a derivitive of cocaine and cocaine itself,
then followed by meth, amphetamine and a few legal prescription drugs.
The test also detected ecstacy but not in large amounts.
Showing up negative were a couple of rave party drugs and PCP.
Because the test is so new, Dr. Field has only experimented with a dozen American cities.
Omaha is on the cutting edge of helping with this research. Dr. Field says, "The levels we see in Omaha are similar to the few other cities we've tested and similar to results in municipalities in Spain and Italy."
Dr. Hank Robinson worked on the state's meth treatment study and is in UNO's criminal justice department. He says, "It's really exciting, it's really a clever idea."
He says this kind of drug testing has great potential.
"It does open up the possibility to track migration of new drugs across the area. And it begins to provide the possibility of where we can throw our most intensive intervention efforts."
Dr. Field says, "This is another tool we think will be complimentary to existing ways to track drug use." Intervention, prevention. That's what the researcher hopes will come of discovering the secrets in cities sewers all over the country.
The waste water treatment plant is also interested in the results. The stuff drug dealers use to make meth can hurt the environment. If it shows up in large amounts, the plant may have to screen for such chemicals in the future to make sure it doesn't get in the river.
Omaha's drug test will be part of Oregon State's research.
This specific drug test doesn't test for pot, heroin and LSD. Scientists are currently creating that test and reconfiguring their machines to make that part of the research too.
Reported by Michelle Bandur;michelle@action3news.com
