In-sewer stability assessment and correction factor refinement of health-related biomarkers

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is a valuable and effective tool for monitoring the population health status. This approach has been widely applied for investigating consumption trend of licit and illicit drugs and disease prevalence. However, most WBE studies, while exploring new biomarkers, often overlooked the substantial uncertainty caused by potential biomarker degradation and correction factors. This PhD study aims to investigate these two main uncertainties for a range of health-related biomarkers to enhance the accuracy of the final consumption estimations. After selecting new biomarkers, we would evaluate the degradation of health-related biomarker with different laboratory scale reactors and further refine the correction factor by comparing sales data with the mass load detected by WBE in wastewater samples collected from wastewater treatment plants with large population. The outcome of this study can be directly applicable in future WBE studies to improve the quality of the estimates.

Please note this is a PhD student Confirmation Progress Review presentation.