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Fulton Schools: In the News

The Opioid Crisis Is Now Being Tracked with Wastewater

The Opioid Crisis Is Now Being Tracked with Wastewater

Advances in wastewater epidemiology have made it possible to detect opioids and other drugs in sewage systems, enabling public health agencies to discover signs of the spread of disease and increases in drug use in various areas. Such wastewater testing techniques helped to detect the presence and spread of the virus that causes COVID when the disease first erupted and became a pandemic. As such wastewater monitoring improves it’s more likely it will be used to also test for other chemicals and substances that are indicators of a variety of health threats, says Erin Driver, an environmental engineer in ASU’s Biodesign Center for Environmental Health Engineering, directed by Rolf Halden, a professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, one of the Fulton Schools.

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