Brave New World - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 57

Zuccato published his results in an international scientific journal in August 2005.
Although most of Europe was on vacation, the phone in his lab began to ring and ring.
“I was almost overwhelmed by calls and e-mails from almost every corner of the globe,”
he said with a rueful smile. “Journalists and scientists from the US, Europe, Australia,
Japan, and South America called me all the time for more details.” Newspapers ran sen-
sationalist stories with headlines such as “ Italian River Flows with Cocaine . ” Zuccato
even received a query from “someone in Colombia,” the suspected source of much of
Italy's cocaine. One frequently asked question was “Can I use your machine to get co-
caine out of the water?” (The answer is no.) Bloggers grew intrigued, and one labeled
Zuccato's work a “Giant Piss Test.”
In November 2005, the SundayTelegraphinvited Zuccato and his team to London,
to test the water in the Thames River. The paper was especially interested in discovering
how much cocaine was in the river next to the Parliament building. When the paper ran
its story, “he hames : Awash with Cocaine,” it misinterpreted Zuccato's data, claiming,
inaccurately, that “Londoners snort more than 150,000 lines of the class A drug every
day.” The story ran on the front page under a photograph of Kate Moss, the supermodel
who had just emerged from a scandal, and rehab, after being photographed snorting co-
caine. What the Negri team had actually written was that they detected 49,066 doses of
cocaine in the Thames on the day of the test. Zuccato's team was incensed by the Tele-
graphstory and turned down “hundreds” of subsequent requests for print and TV in-
terviews about it. But they kept working.
Since then, they have used their cocaine test in Lugano, Switzerland, and in Milan,
and are now comparing the data they collected in Italy, England, and Switzerland. They
are working on tests to detect cannabis, ecstasy, LSD, amphetamines, and heroin, among
other drugs. They are observing the effects of narcotics on fish cell-lines, and in com-
bination with pharmaceuticals, to see what effects such drugs might have on humans.
In the United States, antinarcotic officials have quietly been analyzing sewage and
wastewater across the country for the by-products of illegal drugs, including in major
cities such as San Diego, Washington, DC, and New York, since 2006.
Water quality is affected by drug use in other ways, too. According to the Office of
National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), marijuana farmers hack fields out of national-
forest land to make room for their plants, leading to erosion, water pollution, and hab-
itat destruction. The production of methamphetamines, or meth, relies on toxic chem-
icals such as lye, red phosphorus, and hydriodic acid. The ONDCP estimates that for
every pound of meth, five or six pounds of hazardous waste are produced, much of
which is tossed into wells, onto farmland, or down mine shafts, creating broad pub-
lic health risks. In California, chemicals from meth labs have killed livestock, polluted
streams, and destroyed forests.