07/26/2021
By Sokny Long

The Francis College of Engineering Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering invites you to attend a doctoral dissertation defense by Jiayue Luo on “Occurrence and Fate of Drugs of Abuse in Sewage.”

Ph.D. Candidate: Jiayue Luo
Defense Date: Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2021
Time: 10 to noon EST
Location: This defense will be held via synchronous in-person (Southwick 240) and virtual (Zoom) meeting. Those interested in attending via Zoom should contact the student jiayue_luo@student.uml.edu and committee advisor, sheree_pagsuyoin@uml.edu, at least 24 hours prior to the defense to request access to the meeting.

Committee Chair (Advisor): Sheree Pagsuyoin, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Committee Members:

  • Danjue Chen, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Dhimiter Bello, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies and Professor, Biomedical and Nutritional Sciences, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Frederic Chain, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Abstract:
Drugs of abuse are an emerging class of micropollutants of concern due to their high global consumption, their discharge into the environment, and their highly psychoactive nature that may pose risks to aquatic life. They have been detected in sewage and in surface waters worldwide but less is known about their presence in U.S. (United States) waters despite the high consumption of drugs in the country. Drugs can undergo various transformation processes while in transit in sewers. A comprehensive understanding of their stability in sewer systems is critical in pollution prevention and control, and in wastewater-based surveillance (WBE) of community drug use.

The overall goal of this research was to establish the occurrence of drugs of abuse in sewage and investigate their fate in sewers. The study was framed in the context of the U.S. Northeast region, which has among the highest drug use and drug-related death rates in the U.S. To achieve this goal, this research first developed and validated an analytical method, based on chromatography-mass spectrometry, to detect 13 target drug analytes in wastewater. The analytes of interest included six opioids: morphine, codeine, hydrocodone, methadone and its main metabolite EDDP, and fentanyl; and seven stimulants: cocaine and its main metabolite benzoylecgonine, methamphetamine, amphetamine, MDMA, MDEA and MDA. These drugs were selected on the basis of their high consumption and reported frequent detection in wastewater systems. The developed method is rapid and has high sensitivity and recovery efficiency for all target drugs.

Next, the sewage drug levels at 3 wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in the U.S. Northeast were monitored over 24 months to establish the spatio-temporal drug occurrence patterns in the service areas. All target drugs were detected at 100% efficiency in WWTPs, except for MDA which was detected at 93% efficiency in WWTP-2. Sewage drug concentrations varied temporally across and within the WWTPs at statistically significant levels.

Then, WBE was applied to monitor drug use patterns in a small rural university town in the U.S. Northeast. Drug use trends varied over weekend/weekdays, monthly, seasonally, and pre-and during COVID-19 pandemic. On a mass basis, estimated average per capita drug consumption was highest for cocaine, morphine, and amphetamine, and lowest for MDMA, MDEA, and hydrocodone. Furthermore, the estimated fentanyl use was higher than reports for other rural areas. Findings also identify changing drug use trends over the pandemic period.

Finally, the individual contributions of physical and biochemical processes to in-sewer drug stability were evaluated using 48-hr batch degradation tests. Results indicate that pseudo-first order kinetics describe the degradation of drugs in both wastewater and wastewater-biofilm microcosms. Amphetamine was most stable in any wastewater system. Abiotic chemical transformation played a major role in the degradation of morphine, fentanyl, and cocaine in wastewater. Fentanyl removal from wastewater was also influenced by biofilm sorption.

Research outcomes contribute to the global data on the occurrence of drugs in U.S. water systems. Findings from the degradation studies provide fundamental understanding of the stability and degradation of drugs of abuse in sewers, which could improve estimation models for WBE community drug use surveillance.

All interested students and faculty members are invited to attend the online defense via remote access.