We are familiar with the dangerous level of smog, ozone and pollen. But researchers have made a new discovery regarding the use of illegal drugs. The fact is a high rate of drug usage imposes significant impact in the surrounding atmosphere.

Researchers have been conducting experiments regarding the presence of illegal drugs in the atmosphere since the mid 90s and in 2007Angelo Cecinato uncovered a horrifying truth. Cecinato and colleagues found small amount of cocaine in the air of many major cities of the world. With further research Cecinato discovered that drug concentration in the atmosphere is naturally higher where drug use is higher.This information could help in finding which areas or regions have high drug use rate and should be a lot better than the traditional survey, questionnaire and police record method.

But Cecinato and his colleagues needed to know how precisely they can be related to crime rate. Their main area of research remained within Italy. They collected information regarding the presence of cocaine and cannabinoids (active ingredient of marijuana) from various regions. And to find the correlation between drug use and criminal activity they used Pearson Regression Coefficient (presented by R2). As we know an R2 of 1 means the two factors in consideration coincide completely.

The group of researcher compared their findings with the drug amount seized by the police and found that the value of R2 for drug-criminal activity correlation were .54 for cocaine alone and .73 for total drug substances. Also value of R2 for people looking for detoxification treatments exceeded .94.

They also found some statistical relationship between cocaine level and cancer and cannabinoid level and mental disorder.But Cecinato says that these finding should not be used as any standard but as some starting point for some future researches.Even though it isn’t declared formally, Cecinato gives a warning that level of cocaine could easily lead to heavy secondhand cocaine use.