ArticleFEMS microbes2021
Wastewater monitoring, surveillance and epidemiology: a review of terminology for a common understanding.
Article in FEMS microbes, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Comparative Analysis of Viral Communities in Hospital, University and Urban Wastewater by Shotgun Metagenomic Sequencing.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Evaluation and estimation of epidemic trajectories for SARS-CoV-2 from clinical and wastewater data in Gauteng Province, South Africa.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Wastewater-based surveillance for community exposome surveillance, Louisville, Kentucky.Discover water · 2026Article
- Relating antimicrobial use to wastewater resistance gene patterns via metagenomic analysis of two neighboring treatment plants circa the COVID-19 pandemic.npj antimicrobials and resistance · 2025Article
- Public Opinions from Malawian and Malawi Refugee Camp Residents of Wastewater and Environmental Surveillance.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2025Article
- Comparative Assessment of Wastewater-Based Surveillance Normalization Methods to Improve Pathogen Monitoring in Rural Sewersheds.Environmental science & technology · 2025Article
- The Crucial Role of Laboratory Medicine in Addressing Future Public Health Infectious Threats: Insights Gained from the COVID-19 Pandemic.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Wastewater analysis of chemical markers of public health concern at small spatial scales: A scoping review.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Wastewater surveillance for bacterial targets: current challenges and future goals.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2024Review
- Stakeholder Interviews to Inform Best Practice for Public Facing COVID-19 Wastewater Dashboards.Gates open research · 2024Article
- Comparison of Cefotaxime-ResistantAntibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Demonstrating a Comprehensive Wastewater-Based Surveillance Approach That Differentiates Globally Sourced Resistomes.Environmental science & technology · 2022Article
- QuaID: Enabling Earlier Detection of Recently Emerged SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern in Wastewater.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Response to the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic saw an unprecedented uptake in bottom-up efforts to incorporate community wastewater testing to inform public health. While not a new strategy, various specialized scientific advancements were achieved to establish links between wastewater concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) and public health outcomes. Maximizing public health benefit requires collaboration among a broad range of disciplinary experts, each bringing their own historical context to the central goal of protecting human health. One challenge has been a lack of shared terminology. Standardized terminology would provide common ground for this rapidly growing field. Based on the review herein, we recommend categorical usage of the term 'wastewater-based epidemiology' to describe the science of relating microbes, chemicals or other analytes in wastewater to public health. We further recommend the term 'wastewater surveillance' to describe continuous monitoring of health outcomes (either microbes or chemicals) via wastewater. We suggest that 'wastewater tracking' and 'wastewater tracing' be used in more narrow ways, specifically when trying to find the source of a health risk. Finally, we suggest that the phrase 'wastewater monitoring' be abandoned, except in rare circumstances when ensuring wastewater discharge is safe from a public health perspective.
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Registered trials
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