China
Africa
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And What’s in the Pipes Will Tell
Published in Frank R. Spellman, Fundamentals of Wastewater-Based Epidemiology, 2021
WBE of pathogenic organisms has the possibility to inform on the presence of disease outbreak when or where it is not assumed or expected. At the present time we are concerned with the virus COVID-19 pandemic. Wastewater-based epidemiology is being employed to test for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater. The point is, wastewater can be tested for signatures of viruses including SARS-CoV-2 excreted via feces (Medema et al., 2020; Okoh et al., 2010; Gundy et al., 2008).
Water management beyond the fortressed COVID-19 world: considerations for the long-term
Published in Australasian Journal of Water Resources, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has also thrown up how our health and that of the environment are so tightly coupled. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) investigations now indicate which areas have prevalence of viruses, providing a signal for where further testing of the population and where feasible public health containment measures can be implemented (e.g. Ahmed et al. 2020; Daughton 2020). Reduced mobility of people and goods linked to lockdowns and border closures, as well as the ensuing economic slow-downs in many sectors, is having significant and positive impacts in reducing greenhouse gas emissions; a − 26% average drop in national CO2 emissions at their peak levels of reduction according to Le Quéré et al.’s (2020) global study. Although these and other authors suggest that some reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the longer term is likely as the economy remains depressed and some new habits become engrained, other authors have been lobbying for months that careful recovery policy choices need to be made to have positive chances of continuing on a path of reductions over the longer term (e.g. Gillingham et al. 2020) and working towards the Sustainable Development Goals in all countries (e.g. Barbier and Burgess 2020). In the water domain in lower and middle-income countries, this could include the reallocation of irrigation infrastructure subsidies for investment in water supply, sanitation and wastewater infrastructure (e.g. Barbier and Burgess 2020). Often the development of more sustainable regional water systems requires the connection of all four of these systems and more, specifically that if wastewater is to be reused down the river or directly recycled for purposes such as irrigation, then the quality of treatment needs to be high. In this area, there are many new studies like Bahrami, Amiri, and Badkubi (2020) horizontal series filtration study in this issue where they are developing different techniques to ensure reusable quality water on multiple quality metrics.