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ILLICIT DRUGS IN MUNICIPAL SEWAGE - PROPOSED NEW NON-INTRUSIVE TOOL TO HEIGHTEN PUBLIC AWARENESS OF SOCIETAL USE OF ILLICIT/ABUSED DRUGS AND THEIR POTENTIAL FOR ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES
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Impact/Purpose:
Objectives of ORD Involvement
o Provide the scientific basis for whether deleterious environmental or human health effects are possible, and for informed decisions on how any risks should be addressed.
o Foster further research by academe and other government organizations.
o Educate the public on the potential impact that their individual actions can have, both on the environment and on the health of others.
o Assume the primary leadership role in nurturing this broad research area.Catalyze research in academe, industry, and government (efforts to date have resulted in language for a DW STAR RFA and in proposals to the Sea Grant Program).
o Give teachers a new tool for environmental science classes (useful for elementary, high school, college, and graduate levels). A critical review article that was published in FY00 in NIEHS's Environmental Health Perspectives (EFP) is used in various graduate-level curriculums, and is serving as the core around which a University of Maryland Chemistry seminar series is being planned. Have received thank yous from teachers who claim that the topic has rejuvenated their teaching of environmental science.Give students (from grade- through college-graduate schools) new insights and perspectives with regard to the many aspects of environmental pollution.
o Give the public a new perspective on environmental pollution and teach them, that as individuals, they can control the quality of their environment "The Imperative of the Individual". Very powerful tool to teach pollution prevention.
o Foster a dialog/debate amongst the science community to ascertain what aspect (if any) we need to be concerned about.
Description:
Even though a body of data on the environmental occurrence of medicinal, government-approved ("ethical") pharmaceuticals has been growing over the last two decades (the subject of this book), nearly nothing is known about the disposition of illicit (illegal) drugs in the environment. Whether illicit drugs are similarly discharged to and survive in the environment (as discussed for medicinal drugs in the previous chapters of this book), and if so, whether they have adverse effects on native biota, is completely unknown. Regardless, with the newly acquired interest of environmental chemists in monitoring for medicinal drugs in environmental samples, science is now afforded the rare opportunity to simultaneously advance the understanding of a process (i.e., the inadvertent discharge of illicit drugs to the environment via their purposeful use) and to also have the ability to impact public discourse and social policy on a highly controversial subject - namely, the pervasive manufacture, trade, and use of illegal drugs and abused controlled substances.