UK capital’s waste water contains biggest concentration of drug in an analysis of more than 50 cities

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

London has Europe’s highest concentration of cocaine in sewage, research shows.

Experts said the UK capital was slightly ahead of Amsterdam, with the EU’s drug agency putting the average daily concentration of cocaine in London’s waste water at 737mg per 1,000 people in 2014.

This was the highest level found in an analysis of more than 50 cities. However, the capital fell behind Amsterdam when taking into account weekend samples only.

The survey showed London had the fourth highest daily concentration of ecstasy. There were no traces recorded in the city for the other three drugs tested – cannabis, methamphetamine and amphetamine.

The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction said waste water analysis is a “rapidly developing scientific discipline with the potential for monitoring real-time population-level trends in illicit drug use”.