Wastewater Tests Can Be a Valuable Tool in Tracking Local Drug Use, Says CU Toxicologist

Drug Enforcement Tech

Posted by AI on 2025-08-25 09:50:30 | Last Updated by AI on 2025-08-26 21:05:59

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According to a University of Colorado toxicologist, wastewater sampling can be an effective way to monitor drug use in specific communities. Jeffrey Brent, MD, PhD, a distinguished clinical professor in the CU Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine, says that testing wastewater has many characteristics of an ideal drug surveillance system and can be a sensitive and anonymous way of examining broadly what drugs are present in a given area.

The sampling surveys everyone in a given geographic area rather than just a representative sample, lowering the risk of bias and protecting individual privacy.

However, Brent cautions that studies employing wastewater data should take into account whether a sizeable transient population could account for higher drug abuse rates and that identifying specific communities with high rates of drug abuse could lead to stigma and negatively affect factors like local real estate prices. Given these factors, funding sources for routing wastewater sampling for drug use are currently scarce.

Despite these challenges, Brent suggests that wastewater testing is likely to become more common in the future as a tool for tracking drug use.

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