ReviewEnvironment international2022
Opportunities and limits of wastewater-based epidemiology for tracking global health and attainment of UN sustainable development goals.
Review in Environment international, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Wastewater Surveillance for Early Warning of Infectious Disease Outbreaks: A Systematic Review of Evidence and Implications for One Health Surveillance.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of Gastrointestinal and Respiratory Pathogen Detection in Wastewater in Africa, with Focus on Rwanda: Implications for Early Warning and Public Health Surveillance.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Pooled it
- Does plastic waste present an infection hazard? Current evidence, surveillance challenges and research priorities.One health outlook · 2026Review
- Article
- Thermochemical Treatment of Wastewater Residual Solids for Global Mitigation of Emerging Contaminants.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Wastewater-Based Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 for Early Warning of COVID-19 Infection Dynamics.Viruses · 2026Article
- Wastewater-based epidemiology of influenza A virus in Shenzhen: baseline values and implications for multi-pathogen surveillance.Emerging microbes & infections · 2025Article
- Global wastewater microbiome reveals core bacterial community and viral diversity with regional antibiotic resistance patterns.mSystems · 2025Article
- Use of Wastewater to Monitor Antimicrobial Resistance Trends in Communities and Implications for Wastewater-Based Epidemiology: A Review of the Recent Literature.Microorganisms · 2025Review
- Using Wastewater to Monitor Suggested Changes in Dietary Intake: A Participatory Experiment.Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine · 2025Article
- Advancing health equity in wastewater-based epidemiology: A global critical review and conceptual framework.SSM - population health · 2025Review
- Assess the Variability and Robustness of an Aluminum-Based Adsorption-Precipitation Method for Virus Detection in Wastewater Samples.Microorganisms · 2025Article
- Wastewater Speaks: Evaluating SARS-CoV-2 Surveillance, Sampling Methods, and Seasonal Infection Trends on a University Campus.Microorganisms · 2025Article
- Article
- Article
- Ethical bioprospecting and microbial assessments for sustainable solutions to the AMR crisis.IUBMB life · 2025Review
- Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater as an earlier predictor of COVID-19 epidemic peaks in Venezuela.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- A Review of Wastewater-Based Epidemiology for the SARS-CoV-2 Virus in Rural, Remote, and Resource-Constrained Settings Internationally: Insights for Implementation, Research, and Policy for First Nations in Canada.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Review
- Review
- Repurposing Sewage and Toilet Systems: Environmental, Public Health, and Person-Centered Healthcare Applications.Global challenges (Hoboken, NJ) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) emerged as a powerful, actionable health management tool during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hypothesizing future uses, we explored its potential for real-time, tracking of progress in attaining United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) globally as a non-expensive method using existing infrastructure. We inventoried (i) literature-documented sewerage infrastructure, (ii) demographics of populations served, and (iii) WBE markers informative of 9 SDGs. Among the 17 different sustainable development goals listed by the UN 2030 agenda, more than half of these may be monitored by using WBE monitoring at centralized treatment infrastructure as tabulated in this study. Driven mainly by COVID-19, WBE currently is practiced in at least 55 countries, reaching about 300 million people. Expansion of WBE to 109,000 + treatment plants inventoried in 129 countries would increase global coverage 9-fold to 34.7% or 2.7 billion, leaving out 5 billion people not served by centralized sewerage systems. Associations between population demographics and present-day infrastructure are explored, and geospatial regions particularly vulnerable to infectious disease outbreaks are identified. The results suggest that difference in the differential outcomes in well-being is an outcome of the sanitation infrastructure inequalities and lack of sanitation infrastructure creates doubly disadvantaged populations at risk of poor hygiene and cut off from the early-warning benefits of conventional WBE. This is the first study to explore the feasibility and potential barriers to the use of WBE for tracking the attainment of SDGs globally with at least 9 out of 17 SDGs.
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