Telegraph | News

Telegraph | News: "River of cocaine

By James Orr and Nina Goswami
(Filed: 06/11/2005)

To early morning joggers, the sight of a man drawing buckets of water from a boat midstream in the River Thames may have seemed a little unusual.

On board were a team of three scientists, experts in their field, who were for the first time attempting to test for the presence of cocaine in Britain's most famous river.

Their series of sophisticated calculations based on data obtained from Thames water aimed to uncover the true extent of cocaine abuse in the UK.
The results from the Sunday Telegraph investigation make shocking reading. The research suggests that levels of cocaine use in London are 15 times higher than official estimates.

Clinical toxicologist Prof John Henry warned yesterday: 'Anyone who persists with using cocaine is inevitably causing damage to their health.
'Because of the long-term complications of cocaine use, we are looking at a healthcare timebomb. It will creep up on us just as surely as tobacco and alcohol have done.'

Unlike in the US, where experts claim cocaine use has peaked, the culture of taking the Class A drug in Britain is continuing to grow.
Chemical compounds of the narcotic do not break down easily, making it relatively simple to test for. Traces of the white powder are likely to pass through the user and into sewerage networks. But even when the sewage has been processed and the water returned to the rivers, significant evidence of the drug still remains.

Navigating their way along the Thames aboard the aptly named Watchdog, scientists from Milan's Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research took water samples from a variety of sites.
Dr Chiara Chiabrando, Dr Sara Castiglioni and "