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.
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Articles on Wastewater
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The implications of poor quality effluent being discharged into the environment are dire.
Water and sewerage companies should not be responsible for reporting pollution.
Budget 2021 includes significant investment in Indigenous communities. Moving forward, post-pandemic recovery and future budgets need to address systemic inequalities.
While investments are important, what’s more important is the process and mechanisms through which Indigenous people access funding.
Water privatization is often seen as a solution to municipal budget shortfalls and aging water systems.
A community’s wastewater can predict coronavirus cases that haven’t yet been diagnosed. The quicker that information is known, the better.
Treatment rates are still low in many developing countries.
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.
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.
Detection of a virus in wastewater implies the presence of infected people in a community. It’s not quite so simple though.
To continue to sustain or grow populations — and economies — more is going to have to be done with the same amount of water, or even less.
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.
Identifying the emergence of a disease often relies on sick people seeking medical help. Wastewater monitoring can identify pathogens days or weeks earlier.
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.
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.
We must stop using biosolids for farmlands immediately, especially when alternative ways to recycle wastewater sludge already exist.
Untreated sewage could be the best tracking tool we have to prevent a second wave.
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.
Top contributors
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Adjunct Professor, Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University
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Senior Lecturer in Food Systems, The University of Melbourne
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Researcher in sustainable food systems, The University of Melbourne
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Senior Research Associate, Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-FLORES), United Nations University
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Academic Officer, Water Resource Management Unit lead, Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resource (UNU-FLORES), United Nations University
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Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair, Integrated Knowledge, Engineering and Sustainable Communities, University of Calgary
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Professor of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, Australian National University
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Emeritus Professor, School of Science, Griffith University
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Emeritus Prof, Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology (ACWEB), The University of Queensland
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Adjunct professor, The University of Western Australia
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Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science, Western Sydney University
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Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, UNSW Sydney
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Researcher, Glasgow Caledonian University
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Associate professor, Clinical and Health Sciences, University of South Australia
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Food Systems Research and Partnerships, The University of Melbourne
