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It turns out that England's once glorious sewage is now
betainted with all manner of drugs. Illegal ones such as
cocaine make the headlines, but plenty of legal ones end up
in
our drains too. This is not surprising, since most drugs are
excreted faster than they're metabolized.
Taking
cocaine as an example, there is apparently about
0.7g of the stuff per day in sewage, per 1000 people, in
London. Given a London population of 8 million people,
that's 5.6kg/day, or about a million quid's worth (assuming
that it's cut significantly before being sold).
Marketing this recycled material might be tricky.
However, much cocaine already reaches its customers via
someone's bottom, so it's not an insuperable problem.
https://www.gponlin...ugs/article/1029048
[hippo, May 23 2019]
Money Laundering machine
Money_20Laundering_20machine
shameless plug [Loris, May 23 2019]
Fatberg recycling
https://fatbergremoval.com/
Looking at the truck names (Megatron, Terminator) this fatberg recycling outfit may have already baked this. [notripe, May 23 2019]
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Annotation:
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As progress marches on, the Amish way of life looks
less and less silly. |
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After brexit meltdown, those figure may escalate
significantly. |
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This no doubt accounts for the propensity of some celebrities to consume the output if their own kidneys. |
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// most drugs are excreted faster than they're metabolized // |
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Based on that fact, is there a market for a compact modified dialysis technology to recover for re-use unmetabolized pharmaceutical s ? |
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Years ago I saw a startup company that proposed to cart
away millions of gallons of piss from festivals such as
Glastonbury, separate out all the RNAs / polypeptides / etc
found in it, and sell them to the biotech industry. |
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It occurred to me to wonder how much cocaine,
amphetamine, ketamine etc they'd end up with as a
byproduct of this process, and who they planned to sell
these, er, "biomolecules" to. |
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Why would they sell them ? Why not just keep them for personal entertainment ? |
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Is this the ultimate homeopathic remedy? How can
anybody possibly be ill ever again? |
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//recover for re-use unmetabolized pharmaceutical s//
Yes, I was thinking about that too, especially for new drugs
that are horrendously expensive. |
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The problem with that, though, is that the high prices of
some new drugs are not related to manufacturing costs, but
are instead based on the desire of the pharma company to
recoup their R&D investment and make a profit. So, if you
start recycling the drugs, they'll just adjust their pricing. In
fact, they'll probably sell you the recycling equipment for a
hefty fee. |
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Like most things, active parts won't be active for very long. |
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Depends on the drug. Many (especially antibody-based drugs)
will be broken down by bacteria or simply by oxidation, but
many won't. |
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True, thinking about it again, the drugs can be just solid shaped rocks affecting the active sites in the body rather than being active themselves. I suppose if the rocks crystallize or have a good reversible bind they can be purified enough. |
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What about commonly prescribed pharmaceutical drugs (see link)? Would they leave active ingredients in sewage? |
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Probably, but see above on the economics of drug recycling. |
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Actually, given the preferred use of rolled-up banknotes, I
wonder if money launderers recover their waste water. |
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[Max] - indeed, the economics of drugs are almost entirely unlinked to their production costs. What I was actually thinking about was whether there's enough of these drugs (the very common pharmaceutical drugs) to have any effect. My guess is that the concentration is so low as to be homeopathic - in which case we should market tap water as a homeopathic remedy for all sorts of ailments.
So (and hang on, as there's some sketchy logic coming up) Simvastatin is listed as the most-prescribed drug on that list. This drug is supposed to do stuff to you but also has some unwelcome side-effects (from Wikipedia: "Common side effects include constipation, headaches, and nausea"). Homeopathy works, as we all know, by an infinitesimally-low concentration of a chemical causing the opposite of the effect of that chemical, so it follows that tap water can be marketed as a drug which cures constipation, headaches, and nausea. |
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I like it. Anything that wrings money out of gullible
homeopathologists has my vote. |
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//Actually, given the preferred use of rolled-up banknotes, I
wonder if money launderers recover their waste water.// |
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I bow to [Loris]'s prescience on this one. |
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5.6kg/day in a large weight of what? Not really that feasible, really. Or is there some reality that reverses the m.f.d. because of magic |
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What's the definition of a 'drug'? |
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A drug is any pharmacologically active substance. |
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Surely everything is pharmacologically active? -
some things just not very much |
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Well, possibly. A brick can be pharmacologically active if it's
dropped from high enough. |
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Active? In what way? What does pharmacologically
active mean (?) as this definition would mean that
marijuana is not a drug, as it's a plant that grows
like any other plant, yet it's classified as a drug, so
(again) what's a drug? |
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//Active? In what way?// Well, it can induce sudden and
potentially permanent anaesthesia, for instance. |
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Yes, but anything can induce sudden and
potentially permanent anaesthesia, in sufficient
quantity |
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//What does pharmacologically active mean (?) as this
definition would mean that marijuana is not a drug, as it's a
plant that grows like any other plant// |
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Is there some reason to believe that plants cannot be
pharmacologically active? |
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(And if you have to ask what it means, how can you draw this
conclusion?) |
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Indeed. Many plants (or at least things in plants) are
pharmacologically active. Many current medicines are either
purified from plants, or are synthetic copies of plant
compounds. It's the difference between herbalism (which can
sometimes work) and homeopathy (which works well as a way
of getting money out of morons). |
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No one is offering any definitions for the terms
they are using. As far as I'm concerned there is no
such thing as a 'drug', except as a term with no
meaning that's used by governments when it suits
them to control people's behaviour. |
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Oh for goodness' sake, [xen], grow up or buy a tinfoil hat. |
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If you want a definition of "drug" go to Wikipedia. |
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A drug is something xenzag has had too much of,
methinks. |
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Aside: What is considered the highest known potent drug?. |
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5.6 kg in [8 million x 60g (bacteria/particulate food) + 8million* 1.01g/ml* 1400 ml (urine) + sewage water weight(flush volume) + paper weight (also known as wipe weight) + the weight of everything else put into the system] is not going to be active but is also a needle in a hamlet. |
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//If you want a definition of "drug" go to
Wikipedia// Believe it or not I've already read
that, but it still fails to define what a 'drug' is, as
every single substance fits the 'definition', so the
question remains unanswered. Perhaps someone
would like to try again and define this term 'drug'
which has no meaning. |
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Well, no. Nutrients, for examples, are not drugs under the
Wikipedia definition. Nor are verbs, teacups or hours. |
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There are nutrients and combinations of nutrients
can change the way you think and behave,
especially in excess amounts. Children for example
can become hyper active if they take in too much
sugar, regardless of the source. The whole
drug/legal 'debate' is totally government(s) driven.
It's a way of controlling behaviour. Meanwhile this
moronic illegality generates the most damaging
aspect of labelling certain compounds as drugs -
criminal empires. Sugar causes millions more
deaths and damage than heroin, but sugar is legal,
despite having all of the characteristics that fit the
descriptor of being a drug. |
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//The whole drug/legal 'debate' is totally government(s)
driven. It's a way of controlling behaviour.// Yes, it's
essentially a decision by the UK government that they'd prefer
their population not to be stoned out of its tiny mind. Funny,
that. Isn't it the same in France? |
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I have no idea about France, but alcohol is legal in
the UK and heavy drinking causes a million times
more problems than people who take 'drugs'. It's
the idiocy of governments that keeps every aspect
of the drug trade in the hands of criminals, and
they run rings around the police in every country
with total ease. |
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So, who gets to decide which drugs (and I presume you are
interested only in recreational drugs) are legal? Or do we just
legalize everything? |
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Once glorious sewage? Some unknown verse in the national
anthem? |
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I'm surprised we got this far without someone* rectifying the obviously glaring near-fatal punctuation omission. |
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//Or do we just legalize everything// Yes. There is
no reason to make any 'drug' 'illegal'. 'Drugs' can be
licensed and sold in controlled conditions in
exactly the same way as alcohol is. Result? No
more criminal empires: no more impurities. It's
refusal to do this that has created all of the
problems. Idiot politicians in action. |
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Doesn't the oxycodone experience count against that position,
[xenzag]? |
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In that case, if I've understood it right, a number of psychopaths
seem to have enriched themselves by getting large numbers of
people chemically addicted to an opioid under supposedly
controlled conditions, and there is no legal recourse against
those psychopaths. |
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Technically, they don't constitute a criminal empire, but for some
reason I don't find that comforting. |
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Wait ... did we just agree with ... eh? |
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Excuse us, we need to check we haven't accidentally shifted into an alternate timeline ... |
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//Yes. There is no reason to make any 'drug' 'illegal'// I suppose it is a good population control but it will place a larger burden on societies health systems, not to mention policing systems if alcohol is anything to go by. |
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If you have a valid use, 'illegal' is just another locked door to ask the keys to. |
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