![]() It’s possible to imagine, in fact, the days not too far ahead that would allow investigators to get a search warrant to check on the waste flowing from a single building they find suspicious.Īt this point, the potential for the use of sewage monitoring outside of the realm of public health might be merely theoretical - at least in this country. Wastewater monitoring risks the same problems, especially as the technique gets more sophisticated and allows investigators to zero in on particular communities. While Chicago’s inspector general found that police responses to the ShotSpotter gunshot detection system “rarely produce evidence of a gun-related crime, rarely give rise to investigatory stops, and even less frequently lead to the recovery of gun crime-related evidence during an investigatory stop,” the MacArthur Justice Center documented that the Chicago system had been “deployed overwhelmingly in Black and Latinx neighborhoods,” exacerbating “distrust and fear from residents.” The same science that made it possible for UC San Diego scientists to zero in on a particular dorm also would make it possible for local police to focus on a few blocks where the sewers suggest the use of cocaine or the manufacture of fentanyl.įancy technology pinpointing individual neighborhoods has already eroded trust. But the system can pinpoint issues in relatively small neighborhoods. Of course, monitoring sewage can’t pinpoint anyone’s individual waste (unless the system is as elaborate as Putin’s). The worry is that that could, in turn, bring extra police attention to individual neighborhoods. But it can also detect pesticides and pharmaceuticals - including illegal ones. It can, as we have seen, detect COVID-19, monkeypox and polio. But wastewater monitoring raises big questions of privacy that go far beyond what’s behind a closed door. Presumably few Americans would go to the extreme of creating a personal poop patrol. Putin is apparently so concerned about what he might leave behind - and what it might tell adversaries about his health - that his bodyguards collect his excrement while he’s traveling, put it into distinctive packets, pack them within a special briefcase and take it home. But as Vladimir Putin’s bizarre on-the-road practice shows, it can also raise big questions. (David Kidd/Governing)COVID-19, monkeypox and polio show what wastewater monitoring can accomplish. Ghaeli went on to launch the wastewater-testing startup Biobot Analytics. Other researchers picked up the theme the University of California, Merced, created a dashboard, aptly called COVIDPoops19, that now tracks wastewater monitoring efforts in 70 countries.įormer MIT student Newsha Ghaeli holds the prototype of a device used in sewage systems to track and analyze a wide range of pathogens. ![]() The CDC estimated that at least 80 percent of the population could eventually be served by monitoring the poop and pee that flows through the nation’s sewers. The system funded the development of wastewater systems throughout the country, covering health departments in more than 40 jurisdictions that serve more than 16 percent of the nation’s population. The success of the UC San Diego experiment led the CDC to create a new National Wastewater Surveillance System. ![]() Over the weekend, they tested more than 650 people living and working in the dorm and helped stop one COVID-19 outbreak in its tracks. ![]() On a summer afternoon in 2020, the research team detected a single positive case. They collected the data and published it on a digital dashboard. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, discovered they could detect COVID-19’s telltale RNA in wastewater throughout the campus. So state officials went looking for signs of the disease in neighboring communities - in sewage water. In the disease’s past, by the time they saw a case it was too late to protect the patient and, probably, too late to prevent polio’s spread. Public health officials wanted to get ahead of the disease so they could roll out immunizations. Back in July, doctors in Rockland County, N.Y., diagnosed a 20-year-old man with the first U.S. But it carries risks of its own, including the potential for undermining privacy and for being put to use for purposes outside of public health, such as in law enforcement - uses that, if taken too far, could further erode Americans’ trust in government.Ĭertainly there's no denying wastewater surveillance's value as a public health tool. Most recently, it has been put to work in at least eight states in tracking an outbreak of monkeypox. Wastewater surveillance has a long history in the battle against infectious diseases. They used a time-tested approach that has gained new attention in monitoring the spread of COVID-19: collecting and analyzing samples of water containing human waste from sewage systems. New York state officials struggled in mid-summer to get to the bottom of a polio outbreak.
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