Wastewater-based epidemiology

This is achieved by measuring chemical or biomarkers in wastewater generated by the people contributing to a sewage treatment plant catchment.

[1] Wastewater-based epidemiology has been used to estimate illicit drug use in communities or populations, but can be used to measure the consumption of alcohol, caffeine, various pharmaceuticals and other compounds.

Wastewater-based epidemiology is an interdisciplinary endeavour that draws on input from specialists such as wastewater treatment plant operators, analytical chemists, molecular biologists and epidemiologists.

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) can be applied in the field of research that uses the analysis of sewage and wastewater to monitor the presence, distribution, and prevalence of a disease or chemicals in communities.

The technique has been used for several decades, and an example of its early application is in the 1940s when WBE was applied for the detection and distribution of poliovirus in the sewage of New York, Chicago, and other cities.

[8] Similar counterparts in other countries, such as the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission in Australia[9] and authorities in China[10] use wastewater-based epidemiology to monitor drug use in their populations.

However, considerable variability has been found within populations, based on symptom profiles, which may compromise measurement accuracy as the pathogen evolves.

[15][16] Commonly detected chemicals include, but are not limited to the following;[13][2] By analyzing samples taken across different time points, day-to-day or longer-term trends can be assessed.

[22] During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater-based epidemiology using qPCR and/or RNA-Seq was used in various countries as a complementary method for assessing the load of COVID-19 and its variants in populations.

[3][23][24] Regular surveillance programs for monitoring SARS-Cov-2 in wastewater has been instituted in populations within countries such as Canada, UAE,[25] China, Singapore, the Netherlands,[26] Spain,[27] Austria,[24] Germany[28] and the United States.

[44] A warning of increased cases from wastewater surveillance can "provide health departments with critical lead time for making decisions about resource allocation and preventive measures" and "unlike testing of individual people, wastewater testing provides insights into the entire population within a catchment area".

[48][47] A 2023 review on wastewater-based epidemiology opined the necessity of surveillance wastewater from farms with livestock, wet markets and surrounding areas given the greater risk of pathogen spillover to humans.