Analysis of drugs in wastewater: Forensic science perspective

Drug usage data in a community has traditionally been obtained through population surveys, records from law enforcement activities related to drug-related crime, drug treatment centers, prison data, and hospital records. Wastewater-based epidemiology has gained traction in the last 10 years as a formidable complimentary tool to monitor, track, and estimate community consumption of both illicit and therapeutic drugs within a community. In wastewater-based epidemiology, targeted biomarkers (parent drug and/or metabolite) of illicit and therapeutic drugs are quantified in wastewater and back-calculated to community consumption. In conjunction with more traditional methods of obtaining drug usage data, information from wastewater-based epidemiology has been used to detect the types and amounts of drugs being used within a community. One of the main advantages of wastewater-based epidemiology is the near-real-time data obtained from it, which assists with the quick adaptation of both harm reduction and supply mitigation strategies. Wastewater-based epidemiology has also seen an increase in forensic application through the detection of production facilities within a community, determining the synthesis route of certain illicit drugs like methamphetamine, and enantiomeric profiling to distinguish between illicit and therapeutic use of drugs. This review summarizes the main focus areas and applications of wastewater-based epidemiology from a forensic perspective.