Illicit Drugs: Contaminants in the Environment and Utility in Forensic Epidemiology

The spectrum of chemicals recognized as contributing to widespread contamination of the environment was extended to pharmaceutical ingredients as early as the 1970s. The topic, however, did not begin to attract broader scientific attention until the mid-1990s (Daughton 2009a). Occurring generally at levels below 1∈μg/L (1 part per billion) in ambient waters, recognition of the near-ubiquitous presence of pharmaceuticals in a wide variety of environmental compartments serves as a stunning measure of the advancements in analytical chemistry and of our still-emerging understanding of the scope and complexity of xenobiotic occurrence in the environment. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.