Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (WBE) Research

Dear Colleagues,

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), through analysing relevant biomarkers in wastewater, can provide near-real-time information on the level of consumption or exposure of the population living in the target catchment boundaries to a range of chemicals and pathogens. The approach has been developed and applied for more than a decade, starting with the monitoring of illicit drug use around the world. WBE has been adopted by authorities as evidence or a tool for policy makers to formulate drug control strategies.

In recent years, particularly since 2020, WBE has been advancing to expand both in risk assessments of consumption, use, exposure, or release of chemicals and early warning of infectious disease spread and antibiotic resistance to the community level. There have been thousands of WBE studies on COVID-19 monitoring published in the last 2 years. Despite this success, many challenges remain until WBE can reach its full potential as a complementary monitoring tool for epidemiological studies in human health. This Special Issue welcomes both original research papers as well as systematic reviews on various aspects of WBE, from the application of the approach in new area with special demographics to exploratory studies advancing the science of the field. We encourage the submission of interdisciplinary work and collaborative research on identifying new biomarkers for WBE and triangulating WBE data with other data sources. We also encourage the submission of manuscripts that focus on COVID-19 and other pathogens.

Dr. Peng Du
Dr. Phong K. Thai
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.