黑料吃瓜群网

There's something in the water

By Corin Kelly
Monday, 07 March, 2016


Experts in toxicology have warned that wastewater is the canary in the coal mine. University of Queensland scientists from (Entox) worked with Professor Wayne Hall of the Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research to confirm that methamphetamine residue found in the wastewater of a Queensland city has since 2009.
鈥淢ore than 1000 samples were taken from a coastal metropolitan city and a major inland regional city between 2009 and 2015,鈥 Professor Hall said.
鈥淢ethamphetamine consumption increased 4.8 times in the metropolitan area over the timeframe, and 3.4 times in the regional area.
鈥淭his coincides with a , which showed an upsurge of more than 170,000 regular meth users across Australia between 2009 and 2015, to a total of 270,000 users nationwide.鈥
Professor Jochen Mueller of Entox and colleagues Dr Phong Thai, Ms Foon Yin Lai and Mr Jake O鈥橞rien collaborated to build on previous insightful studies featuring waste testing.
Armed with knowledge about the ways that specific drugs are excreted, they used census populations for both the metropolitan and regional catchments to ascertain their results.
Methamphetamine consumption was measured in milligrams per day per 1000 inhabitants.
In 2009 the mean for the coastal metropolitan area was 234mg/day/1000 people, which increased to 1126mg/day/1000 people in 2015.
The study began a year later in the inland regional city, marked by a mean of 115mg/day/1000 people in 2010, which increased to 398mg/day/1000 people in 2015.
Professor Hall said the wastewater analysis alone did not determine whether consumption had increased because there were more users or because existing users were consuming more.
鈥淗owever, when you view this together with other timely research, it is consistent with there being exponential growth in the number of users,鈥 Professor Hall said.
, led by Professor Louisa Degenhardt from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, was released last week.
Professor Hall was a contributor to the report, which gave the total number of regular users in Australia as 270,000 鈥 greater than 2014 total population figures for Hobart (219,243) or Townsville (178,649).
Both the wastewater study and the study on Australian usage estimates have been published by

Related Articles

A Day in the Life of a rehabilitation physician and burnout coach

Dr Jo Braid is a rehabilitation physician and coach dedicated to transforming burnout recovery...

A Day in the Life of an advanced exercise physiologist

Luke Snabaitis is the first exercise physiologist in Queensland Health history to...

In conversation with AHPA CEO Bronwyn Morris-Donovan

Among the many reforms 黑料吃瓜群网 Professions Australia's Bronwyn Morris-Donovan is...



Content from other channels on our network


  • All content Copyright 漏 2025 黑料吃瓜群网-Farrow Pty Ltd