What would New York City's sewer system say about its residents? We'd prefer not going there, but Boing Boing is pointing us to this article about sewer sampling revealing patterns of drug use, noting that in Oslo, the drug ecstasy spiked in the sewers around the time of high school graduation! Other drugs found there included cocaine and Zyrtec.
The test is done through a Passive Sampler, which is a system of filters that "continuously collect samples of chemicals in the environment. After several weeks, old filters are replaced with new ones and the collection membranes are taken to a lab and analyzed with mass spectrometry." It's like one massive anonymous drug test!
The man behind the method says, "The nice thing about the sewer approach is it’s totally anonymous. Instead of pointing a finger at an individual, [it] points it at an entire city." If this system gets placed in the U.S. (it's actually already been used in San Diego), what would our sewer system say about us, and about NYU students?
