Wastewater-based epidemiology for comprehensive communitywide exposome surveillance: A gradient of metals exposure.

Community wastewater surveillance is an established means to measure health threats. Exposure to toxic metals as one of the key environmental contaminants has been attracting public health attention as exposure can be related to contamination across air, water, and soil as well as associated with individual factors. This research uses Jefferson County, Kentucky, as an urban exposome case study to analyze sub-county metal concentrations in wastewater as a possible indicator of community toxicant exposure risk, and to test the feasibility of using wastewater to identify potential community areas of elevated metals exposure.

The Detection of Periodic Reemergence Events of SARS-CoV-2 Delta Strain in Communities Dominated by Omicron.

Despite entering an endemic phase, SARS-CoV-2 remains a significant burden to public health across the global community. Wastewater sampling has consistently proven utility to understanding SARS-CoV-2 prevalence trends and genetic variation as it represents a less biased assessment of the corresponding communities. Here, we report that ongoing monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 genetic variation in samples obtained from the wastewatersheds of the city of Louisville in Jefferson county Kentucky has revealed the periodic reemergence of the Delta strain in the presence of the presumed dominant Omicron strain.

Combining Community Wastewater Genomic Surveillance with State Clinical Surveillance: A Framework for SARS-CoV-2 Public Health Practice.

This study aimed to develop a framework for combining community wastewater surveillance with state clinical surveillance for the confirmation of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants within the community and to provide recommendations on how to expand on such research and apply the findings in public health responses. Wastewater samples were collected weekly from 17 geographically resolved locations in Louisville/Jefferson County, Kentucky (USA), from February 10 to December 13, 2021. Genomic surveillance and quantitative reverse transcription PCR (RT-qPCR) platforms were used to screen for SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater, and state clinical surveillance was used for confirmation.

Detection of human, porcine and canine picornaviruses in municipal sewage sludge using pan-enterovirus amplicon-based long-read Illumina sequencing.

We describe the successful detection of human, porcine and canine picornaviruses (CanPV) in sewage sludge (at each stage of treatment) from Louisville, Kentucky, USA, using Pan-enterovirus amplicon-based long-read Illumina sequencing. Based on publicly available sequence data in GenBank, this is the first detection of CanPV in the USA and the first detection globally using wastewater-based epidemiology. Our findings also suggest there might be clusters of endemic porcine enterovirus (which have been shown capable of causing systemic infection in porcine) circulation in the USA that have not been sampled for around two decades.

Public Awareness of and Support for the Use of Wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 Monitoring: A Community Survey in Louisville, Kentucky.

The majority of sewer systems in the United States and other countries are operated by public utilities. In the absence of any regulation, the public perception of wastewater monitoring for population health biomarkers is an important consideration for a public utility commission when allocating resources for this purpose. We conducted a survey in August 2021 as part of an ongoing COVID-19 community prevalence study in Louisville/Jefferson County, KY, US.

The Rapid Assessment of Aggregated Wastewater Samples for Genomic Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 on a City-Wide Scale.

Throughout the course of the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic there has been a need for approaches that enable rapid monitoring of public health using an unbiased and minimally invasive means. A major way this has been accomplished is through the regular assessment of wastewater samples by qRT-PCR to detect the prevalence of viral nucleic acid with respect to time and location. Further expansion of SARS-CoV-2 wastewater monitoring efforts to include the detection of variants of interest/concern through next-generation sequencing has enhanced the understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.