Grant: Alliance Grants

Wastewater-based surveillance (WBS) is an emerging approach to monitor pathogens and substances in sewers as a way of tracking their presence and spread in communities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, WBS developed into a powerful tool, applied globally, for tracking the prevalence of disease in communities and informing public health actions. Trends in the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater correlated well with clinical cases and hospitalizations and allowed for rapid determination of the emergence of key sub-lineages of the virus. This approach, that does not require sampling of individuals, has now been adapted for detection of many other pathogens and high-risk substances (including illicit drugs) that impact the health and well-being of our communities. The opioid crisis has emerged globally and is adversely impacting communities across Canada, with more than 8,000 deaths annually. The increased use of high-risk substances (e.g.., drugs of abuse) and introduction of new substances and additives to the drug supply intensified during the pandemic period. This project will apply the experience gained from WBS for pathogens during the pandemic to enhance its application to the toxic drug crisis that continues to impact our society. This project will improve methods to detect a diversity of high-risk substances, including their metabolites, and chemical forms (i.e., isomers and enantiomers). It will also assess approaches to model and reduce variability in wastewater measurements, so that local and national surveillance trends can be made more informative and potentially more actionable. Although not a solution, improved WBS can be an additional valuable tool in supporting public health practitioners in their efforts to address the toxic drug crisis. In addition, looking downstream, improved methods will be applied to predict the fate and exposure of these potential contaminants to aquatic ecosystems, supporting future environmental risk assessment and management.