December 2024 | Water Matters, knowledge magazine of H2O Media
In recent years, alarming figures about drug use in major cities have emerged from wastewater screening. Surprisingly, drug use in rural areas has also proven to be significant. Now, for the first time, wastewater data has been used to estimate the size of the drug market in the Netherlands.
In Water Matters, the knowledge supplement of H2O Magazine, researchers from KWR Watercycle Research Institute and the University of Amsterdam describe how the scope and value of the drug trade can be estimated. By combining wastewater data with street prices, population demographics, and information on human excretion patterns, they assessed the market size of substances such as amphetamine, MDMA, and benzoylecgonine (a cocaine metabolite). The estimated annual monetary value of these substances is approximately €900 million (2022 prices). For amphetamine, no correlation with urbanization was found, while MDMA and cocaine, especially the latter, showed significant urban relationships. Although the estimates are not comprehensive for all of the Netherlands, they align with other studies and European data.
Additional studies in this edition address topics such as dike evaluations in Limburg regarding piping (subsoil erosion during high water), which revealed fewer cases of piping during the July 2021 floods than anticipated. This discrepancy raises questions about the evaluation methods for Limburg’s dikes and whether the standards are overly conservative.
Other highlighted subjects include water quality in densely populated deltas like the Netherlands, which face pressures from overexploitation, pollution, and climate change. Improved monitoring and climate modeling are deemed essential for more reliable quality predictions.
To safeguard drinking water sources for the future, the North Holland drinking water company PWN plans to create additional storage basins and pre-treat IJsselmeer water in a “purifying landscape.” The publication explores what such a landscape might look like.
The online edition of Water Matters can be found on the H2O website.
