An analysis of Queensland's sewage suggests major cities have seen a nearly five-fold increase in methamphetamine use since 2009.

Scientists from the University of Queensland (UQ) tested samples of waste water from two catchments and tested them for illicit drug residue.

A coastal metropolitan city recorded an increase of 4.8 times, while an inland centre found a more than threefold increase in methamphetamine use.

UQ's Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research Professor Wayne Hall said they would not be releasing the names of the places tested, but that they were large catchment areas.

"It's more of an issue for regional towns, we don't want to give out information that might be seen as reflecting poorly on them", Professor Hall said.

"I don't think it does (reflect badly) because drug use is found everywhere, but that's what we've decided to do."

The researchers also tested the samples for other illicit drugs, but methamphetamine saw the highest increase.

"We've not seen any comparable trend for any other illicit drug over the same timeframe," Professor Hall said.

"Methamphetamine is the one that sticks out as the drug that's shown a huge increase."

The method of analysing waste water has the potential to be used for other research.

"This is a relatively inexpensive way of monitoring what's going on in the population, it provides data that we've never had before", Professor Hall said.

"One of the projects we've got is looking at alcohol and tobacco, you can monitor levels of those drugs in the population.

"You can also, in principle use it as a urine test of the health status of the whole population. It has a broad range of potential public health uses."

The researchers are now extending their work to sample more catchments which they hope will cover around 40 per cent of the population.