1029 Italian River 'full of cocaine'

Received this by email from a friend this morning. Quite disturbing on two levels -

a) the large number of people who are using this drug and
b) the fact that sewage is being pumped into the Po river.

[b]Italian river 'full of cocaine'[/b]

Scientists have found large quantities of cocaine residue in a river in northern Italy - suggesting consumption is much higher than previously thought.
They say they found the equivalent of 40,000 doses a day in the Po valley, home to about five million people.

The study, published by the UK's Environmental Health magazine, tests sewage and rivers for levels of a by-product of cocaine metabolism.

The team say the test has to be refined before being applied on a vast scale.

The chemical found in the urine of cocaine users is called benzoylecgonine, or BE.

It is produced only by metabolising cocaine.

[b][i]'Staggering'[/i][/b]

The new report suggests that past studies of cocaine use in Italy - mainly based on population surveys and crime statistics - had been optimistic.

According to official estimates, people living around the Po consume about 15,000 doses of cocaine a month.

But the research claims more than three times as much cocaine is used in the area.

The team, led by Dr Ettore Zuccato from the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, said they were taken aback by their findings, whose economic impact they described as "staggering".

"The large amount of cocaine (at least 1,500 kg/3,307lb) that our findings suggest are consumed per year in the River Po basin would amount... to about $150m (£84m) in street value," the scientists wrote in the journal.

They hope that in the near future, they will be able to develop similar tests in order to assess the true number of cannabis and heroin users.

Story from BBC NEWS:
[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/4746787.stm[/url]

Category
General chat about Italy

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 08/05/2005 - 04:13

what if they had to test the thames?''
usually the richer the city the higher the consumption of cocaine....

The river Po runs through one of the richest area of Italy... so, not a lot of surprise there.

Paola

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 08/05/2005 - 04:43

.......sewage being pumped into the Po?

I shall refrain from the obvious bad joke

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 08/05/2005 - 04:47

[QUOTE=latoca]what if they had to test the thames?''
usually the richer the city the higher the consumption of cocaine....

The river Po runs through one of the richest area of Italy... so, not a lot of surprise there.

Paola[/QUOTE]

I was given to understand that UK authorities have worked very hard to clean up the Thames (still wouldn't swim in it though). Certainly the river Liffey is disgusting, more so with hard waste (boxes, wrappers, etc) than sewerage (which is pumped out to sea from two points on Dublin Bay, though recent EU Regulations now require all sewage to be processed before dumping).

I simply thought that sewerage in Italy would be processed through plants before being pumped into any natural system, so it came as a surprise that this kind of test could be carried out on the Po River.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 08/05/2005 - 04:50

I actually think they are processed... possibly the chemical that cocaine developes is not filtered by the plants.

People swim in the river po ( not in Turin) although it is a very dangerus river and many people died in it.

well, not a nice image to close the email, but ..

Paola

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 08/05/2005 - 05:47

sano.... seems you are learning the reality of life in iatlay...the waste should be processed but in general isnt.... contracts on waste disposal are offered for tender and lowest bidders win....ie syndicated criminals control waste disposal in italy and undercut any company that wishes to operate according to legislation and dispose of waste safely....they just dump it straight from the tankers in remote areas of puglia..and points south...they have already poisoned several northern areas ......
the Po is used for irrigation.... untreated water..... on most of the areas surrounding its water course...indeed the most productive plains in italy... and grows most of the italian produced rice..... what happens to those people that spend half their life wondering around in the water..... are they all on permanent highs as they harvest the rice..... is this why rissotto is so popular here.... obviously could be an addition to grandmothers older recipes

as regards the argument...what about the thames.... it doesnt really matter to people along the Po what the river in london is like..... or for that matter the one in dublin.....

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 08/05/2005 - 07:23

I used to work in the pharmaceutical industry. Observations such as those made in this study are fairly common. Most drugs pass through the human body unchanged or possibly slightly chemically modified to enable the kidneys to excrete them. During WWII for example penicillin was in such short supply that the urine of soldiers treated with penicillin was saved in bottles, sent to the pharmaceutical manufacturer and the penicillin was re-crystalised to be given to other wounded soldiers.

I was involved in a study of the drug content of the Thames and we discovered high concentrations of progestogen and oestrogen the hormones used in the contraceptive pill.We didn't look at drugs of abuse, but I suspect those would have been high also. Obviously the source of the sex hormones that we detected was from the urine of women taking the pill, for London that could be in the region of a million individuals excreting hormone into the same river every day. Much more significant than a few recreational drug users.

The fact that these compounds can be detected in the water does not mean that raw sewage is being dumped into the water. The process of cleaning up sewage is designed to remove nitrates, phosphates and organic material that consumes oxygen from the water and makes it unable to support aquatic life. It's not designed to return pure, distilled water to the rivers. Drugs will largely pass through the system unchanged.

The study is also a demonstration of just how good chemical analysis is becoming, the techniques of measurement are picking up these substances at concentrations that would have been below the limits of detection just a few years ago. the quantities quoted sound high, but when diluted in the body of water in a river there's really not much activity to detect at all.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 08/05/2005 - 07:34

I can't understand all of this fuss about Coke, why do people insist on snorting it up their noses, surely the bubbles must be irritating, any way I prefer Pepsi...