Wastewater monitoring for public health
Wastewater contains clues about the resurgence of diseases once thought to be eradicated, the evolution of new diseases, such as COVID-19, and its ever-changing variants, and even the prevalence of drug use.
In this video, Alexandria “Ali” Boehm, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford School of Engineering, and Marlene Wolfe (BA ’11, CEE postdoc ’21), an assistant professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, discussed how wastewater-based epidemiology may be useful for informing public health and local government response to viral diseases like COVID-19. Megan Plumlee (CEE MS ’04, PhD ’08), director of research at the Orange County Water District, moderated and explored the benefits and challenges of this approach.
