Over 800 sites across the US report coronavirus data from sewage to the CDC. Here’s how this kind of surveillance system works and what it can and can’t tell you.
Most local municipalities in South Africa are unable to maintain basic waste water management infrastructure.
Photo by Julien Behal/PA Images via Getty Images
Water and sewerage companies should not be responsible for reporting pollution.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gives Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland the thumbs up after she delivered the federal budget in the House of Commons.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Budget 2021 includes significant investment in Indigenous communities. Moving forward, post-pandemic recovery and future budgets need to address systemic inequalities.
The infrastructure gap has forced Indigenous people to think outside the box, leverage their own funds.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods
While investments are important, what’s more important is the process and mechanisms through which Indigenous people access funding.
Men wade through an abandoned highway tunnel to repair a self-created water system in the Esperanza neighbourhood of Caracas, Venezuela, in June 2020.
(AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Untreated wastewater is responsible for the deaths of 800 children under five every day, and inflicts serious damage to the environment. Knowing where sewage ends up is vital.
There’s valuable data on the spread of COVID-19 in this wastewater.
Montgomery County Planning Commission
As the world waits for vaccines against COVID-19, testing wastewater can give communities and smaller locales, such as school districts, valuable signals about infections trends.
Fast fashion is far from green. But the rapid expansion of online clothing resale platforms could help shrink the garment industry’s negative impact on the environment.
Sewage testing can be used for early detection of disease.
(Shutterstock)
Identifying the emergence of a disease often relies on sick people seeking medical help. Wastewater monitoring can identify pathogens days or weeks earlier.
Scarecrows float in an oilsands tailings pond to keep birds from landing, in Fort McMurray, Alta., in June 2017.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
New regulations will allow oilsands companies to release 1.3 trillion litres of liquid waste into the Athabasca River in 2022. A new technology could clean the wastewater before it’s let go.
Germs flushed down the drain can be detected at water treatment plants.
Derek Davis/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
Sewage surveillance is one technique that can alert authorities to the presence of a pathogen in the community. An environmental engineer explains the state of the science when it comes to SARS-CoV-2.
Damage to septic tanks is one of the major health hazards people face when they return to their bushfire-affected homes. It was simply dumb luck a disease outbreak didn’t happen last summer.
The government plans to monitor sewage for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. And while this holds promise to tracking future local outbreaks, there are also some sticky ethical questions to consider.
Academic Officer, Water Resource Management Unit lead, Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resource (UNU-FLORES), United Nations University