Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (WBE) Research, 2nd Edition
A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water and One Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2025 | Viewed by 269
Special Issue Editors
Interests: wastewater-based epidemiology; illicit drugs; emerging contaminants; health risk assessments; biomarkers
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: new biomarkers for WBE; new application of WBE; method uncertainties; COVID-19; pathogens
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
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 to a range of chemicals and pathogens experienced by the population living within target catchment boundaries. This approach has been developed and applied for more than a decade and started with the monitoring of illicit drug use around the world. WBE has been adopted by authorities and policy makers to find evidence and formulate drug control strategies.
In recent years, particularly since 2020, the use of WBE has expanded into both risk assessments of the consumption, use, exposure, or release of chemicals and early warnings about infectious disease spread and antibiotic resistance at the community level. There have been thousands of WBE studies on COVID-19 monitoring published in the last two years. Despite this success, many challenges still prevent WBE from reaching its full potential as a complementary monitoring tool for epidemiological studies of human health. This Special Issue welcomes both original research papers and systematic reviews on various aspects of WBE, from the application of this approach in new areas with special demographics to exploratory studies advancing the science of this field. We encourage the submission of interdisciplinary work and collaborative research that identify new biomarkers for WBE and triangulate 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 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.
Keywords
- new biomarkers for WBE
- new applications of WBE
- early warning of infectious disease
- monitoring substances of abuse
- method uncertainties
- health risk assessments
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