In October 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human services (HHS) renewed its declaration that the opioid crisis is a national public health emergency. Since its initial declaration in 2017, there has been an unprecedented growth in awareness of the opioid crisis, but a lack of available data to effectively inform public health officials’ decision-making in response.  Wastewater-based epidemiology (WWBE) is a prominent method of monitoring the consumption of drugs in communities, providing more accurate data in semi-real time. Over the last two decades, WWBE has been successfully used to measure the community load of several prescription and illicit drugs from the influent wastewater collected at treatment facilities.  Advancing WWBE, Biobot Analytics measures opioid consumption in communities by quantifying opioids and their urinary metabolites within a city’s wastewater network.  Here, Biobot’s sampling procedures, method development and validation experiments are described in detail. Using GIS analysis of the city’s sewer systems, we select a representative set of manholes to deploy our sampling devices. Over a 24-hour period, each sampling device collects raw wastewater samples which are sterile filtered and loaded through solid-phase extraction (SPE) cartridges. These cartridges are extracted in the laboratory and the extracts are analyzed via HPLC-MS/MS. Our primary method is capable of quantifying over 40 small drug analytes with an emphasis on opioid drugs and their urinary metabolites. The resultant concentrations are transformed into consumption rates (mg/day/1000 people) as well as morphine milligram equivalent rates (MME/day/1000 people) for opioid drugs.  Biobot Analytics brings together wastewater-based epidemiology, data science and engineering to enable communities to take more effective actions in response to opioid abuse. While the application of WWBE to the upstream sewer network is challenging, it bears significant potential in understanding the true scope of the opioid crisis with finer spatial resolution. The Biobot panel will continue to expand to include substances of emerging concern in our country.

Biobot analytics: Novel sampling and analytical method to quantify opioids and their urinary metabolites in wastewater

2019 Fall National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.