Could wastewater analysis be a useful tool for China?: a review

Gao, Jianfa, O'Brien, Jake, Lai, Foon Yin, van Nuijs, Alexander L.N., He, Jun, Mueller, Jochen F., Xu, Jingsha and Thai, Phong K. (2015) Could wastewater analysis be a useful tool for China?: a review. Journal of Environmental Sciences, 27 . pp. 70-79. ISSN 1001-0742

[img]
Preview
PDF - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader
Available under Licence Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives.
Download (304kB) | Preview

Abstract

Analysing wastewater samples is an innovative approach that overcomes many limitations of traditional surveys to identify and measure a range of chemicals that were consumed by or exposed to people living in a sewer catchment area. First conceptualised in 2001, much progress has been made to make wastewater analysis (WWA) a reliable and robust tool for measuring chemical consumption and/or exposure. At the moment, the most popular application of WWA, sometimes referred as sewage epidemiology, is to monitor the consumption of illicit drugs in communities around the globe, including China. The approach has been largely adopted by law enforcement agencies as a device to monitor the temporal and geographical patterns of drug consumption. In the future, the methodology can be extended to other chemicals including biomarkers of population health (e.g. environmental or oxidative stress biomarkers, lifestyle indicators or medications that are taken by different demographic groups) and pollutants that people are exposed to (e.g. polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, perfluorinated chemicals, and toxic pesticides). The extension of WWA to a huge range of chemicals may give rise to a field called sewage chemical-information mining (SCIM) with unexplored potentials. China has many densely populated cities with thousands of sewage treatment plants which are favourable for applying WWA/SCIM in order to help relevant authorities gather information about illicit drug consumption and population health status. However, there are some prerequisites and uncertainties of the methodology that should be addressed for SCIM to reach its full potential in China.

Item Type: Article
Keywords: Drug consumption; Wastewater analysis; Biomarkers; Population health
Schools/Departments: University of Nottingham Ningbo China > Faculty of Science and Engineering > Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jes.2014.09.025
Related URLs:
URLURL Type
UNSPECIFIEDPublisher
Depositing User: Yu, Tiffany
Date Deposited: 08 Nov 2018 13:29
Last Modified: 08 Nov 2018 13:29
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/55487

Actions (Archive Staff Only)

Edit View Edit View