How Wastewater (Sewage) Monitoring Works | Early Detection for Infectious Diseases in Your Community

We call it sewage, but to scientists, what we flush down the toilet or wash down the drain offers valuable clues for tracking diseases in your community. In 2020, CDC established the National Wastewater Surveillance System to monitor wastewater or sewage for signs of disease. Now this system monitors multiple viruses and other health threats in wastewater so we can understand what's spreading in our communities. How does wastewater monitoring work? Once the sewage leaves a home or business, it travels through the sewer to the wastewater treatment plant. Before it's treated, wastewater operators take samples to send to a laboratory. Hundreds of wastewater treatment plants across the United States collect samples and send them to public health and other laboratories that test them for viruses or other pathogens. Sometimes they're looking for a flu virus or how a virus is changing. Genomic sequencing can be applied to wastewater to understand not only what pathogens are present but how they might be changing within a community. So if the numbers are increasing or decreasing or if there are other shifts. The findings get reported to health departments and CDC. So it helps us to make decisions because it gives us a fuller picture of what's going on in our communities independent of test-seeking behavior, health care access, or anything else that might be going on with a particular disease or condition. Wastewater results also let people know how to protect themselves and others. To learn more about wastewater monitoring in your community, go to cdc.gov slash wastewater.