Around 2005, amid the grim accumulation of reports on the totality of meth’s destruction, Jennifer Field began to think about how she might help. Field is an environmental chemist at Oregon State University, and Oregon had become one of those meth-ravaged states: One-third of all drug-treatment admissions were for meth, according to a Department of Justice study. Meth, Governor Ted Kulongoski said, factored in 85 percent of the state’s property and identity thefts. But like many drugs, meth proved difficult for officials to track; they couldn’t provide objective figures on who exactly was using the drug.
Field didn’t know much about drugs. But she knew that their chemical components appeared almost everywhere: in hair follicles, in blood, and, of course, in urine. That led to her a-ha moment. What if she could track the use of meth across the state by detecting it in waste water? After all, whatever we put in our bodies ends up as chemical components in our streams of refuse. Everything is in there. So what if everything were detectable?
Field started at home: a sewage-treatment plant in Corvallis, Ore., the city in which OSU is located. Corvallis is an affluent town; methamphetamine, in the public perception at least, is a drug of the poor. Field thought that if she could find and measure meth in Corvallis, she could measure it anywhere. The city’s waste-water-management team agreed to let her and a colleague take a few samples from the plant. Sure enough, they found chemical evidence of meth in the waste water.
