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Sources

What Europe’s Sewage Says About Its Drug Habits

SCIENCE DAILY (USA), LE FIGARO, AFP (France)

Worldcrunch

Scientists in Norway and Italy have analyzed sewage samples from European cities to compare the drug habits of their inhabitants, the Science Daily reports.

Tracing the urinary biomarkers of cocaine, amphetamine, ecstasy, methamphetamine and cannabis in sewage from 19 cities in 11 European countries during seven consecutive days in March 2011, the researchers from the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) in Oslo and the Mario Negri Institute in Milan say they were able to get an accurate measure of drug use across the population, reports Le Figaro.

The results, published in the Science in the Total Environment journal, found the highest cocaine use in Antwerp (Belgium), followed by Amsterdam (Netherlands), the AFP reports. Amsterdam also had the highest concentration of ecstasy and cannabis. The highest levels of methamphetamines were found in Helsinki and Turku (Finland), as well as Oslo (Norway).

Extrapolating from their results, scientists estimate that 500 million Europeans consume approximately 355 kilograms of cocaine daily. According to the AFP, the report says that about a third of European citizens have tried an illicit drug. At least one person dies of an overdose every hour.

In general, says the Science Daily, cocaine and ecstasy loads were most elevated on weekends, spiking on Friday and Saturday nights.

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Society

Genoa Postcard: A Tale Of Modern Sailors, Echos Of The Ancient Mariner

Many seafarers are hired and fired every seven months. Some keep up this lifestyle for 40 years while sailing the world. Some of those who'd recently docked in the Italian port city of Genoa, share a taste of their travels that are connected to a long history of a seafaring life.

A sailor smokes a cigarette on the hydrofoil Procida

A sailor on the hydrofoil Procida in Italy

Daniele Frediani/Mondadori Portfolio via ZUMA Press
Paolo Griseri

GENOA — Cristina did it to escape after a tough breakup. Luigi because he dreamed of adventures and the South Seas. Marianna embarked just “before the refrigerator factory where I worked went out of business. I’m one of the few who got severance pay.”

To hear their stories, you have to go to the canteen on Via Albertazzi, in Italy's northern port city of Genoa, across from the ferry terminal. The place has excellent minestrone soup and is decorated with models of the ships that have made the port’s history.

There are 38,000 Italian professional sailors, many of whom work here in Genoa, a historic port of call that today is the country's second largest after Trieste on the east coast. Luciano Rotella of the trade union Italian Federation of Transport Workers says the official number of maritime workers is far lower than the reality, which contains a tangle of different laws, regulations, contracts and ethnicities — not to mention ancient remnants of harsh battles between shipowners and crews.

The result is that today it is not so easy to know how many people sail, nor their nationalities.

What is certain is that every six to seven months, the Italian mariner disembarks the ship and is dismissed: they take severance pay and after waits for the next call. Andrea has been sailing for more than 20 years: “When I started out, to those who told us we were earning good money, I replied that I had a precarious life: every landing was a dismissal.”

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