Wastewater-based epidemiology and future perspectives: testing urban water for community-wide public health assessment

A new approach in public health epidemiology utilizing urban water profiling for health biomarkers has been recently pioneered to provide near real-time measurements of public health. Although still in its infancy, this approach is currently used to determine community-wide illicit drug use trends via the analysis of urinary drug biomarkers in wastewater with the usage of cutting-edge chemical and bio-analytical techniques. Research is being currently undertaken by the SEWPROF European Consortium (www.sewprof-itn.eu) and COST Consortium (www.score-cost.eu) to identify and validate new specific biomarkers in order to provide comprehensive information on community-wide health and improved risk assessment with the ultimate goal of disease prevention. This talk will introduce the concept and its rapid advances. It will also explore new avenues in the utilisation of urban water profiling in the assessment of population health and health risk prediction.