Wastewater is known to contain the accumulated biomarkers of endogenous human metabolism that directly reflects the exposure and stressors placed upon all those in a contributing community. Quantitatively measuring these specific biomarkers in wastewater collated from defined communities allows the averaged patterns of exposure and/or effect to be evaluated with the potential to provide excellent spatial and temporal coverage.Thus far the quantitative analysis of wastewater for specific human biomarkers has primarily focused on determining the level of community drug use but there is also the clear potential to develop a range of innovative techniques as a solution to quantitatively assess patterns of other factors within populations, such as chemical exposure, nutrition and disease. Wastewater-based epidemiology can already provide ecological data on the prevalence of community licit and illicit drug use, pesticide and phthalate exposure, combined oxidative stress response or allergy burden. The margin of exposure (MOE) approach has allowed the assessment of the risks posed from a number of these. The approach however has yet to realose its potential to provide data on community exposure to a much wider range of chemicals, including flame retardants, per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and personal care products, as well as providing information on a range of health effects (e.g. asthma, allergies, depression), diseases (e.g. cancer, diabetes, obesity) and a whole range of infectious disease agents (pathogens such as bacteria, viruses and protozoa) including antibiotic resistance. A broad and collaborative network of wastewater sampling stations, covering up to around 70% of the Australian population, has been established to realize the potential afforded by archived samples dating back to 2009 . This presentation will focus on the broad range of possibilities that the WBE approach currently offers along with an assessment of future possibilities in order to allow for the improved assessment of community health.

Expanding wastewater-based epidemiology to inform on public health

2019 Fall National Meeting

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