Showcasing the potential of wastewater-based epidemiology to track pharmaceuticals consumption in cities: Comparison against prescription data collected at fine spatial resolution.

Showcasing the potential of wastewater-based epidemiology to track pharmaceuticals consumption in cities: Comparison against prescription data collected at fine spatial resolution. Environ Int. 2021 Feb 09;150:106404 Authors: Escolà Casas M, Schröter NS, Zammit I, Castaño-Trias M, Rodriguez-Mozaz S, Gago-Ferrero P, Corominas L Abstract While the extent of pharmaceutical consumption within a society/community is of high relevance to its health, economy and general wellbeing, this data is often not readily available. Herein, we strengthen a wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) approach as a way to track the consumption of pharmaceuticals within the sampled community. This method is less laborious than established questionnaire or databases approaches and allows a higher temporal and spatial resolution. The WBE approach was conducted by sampling influent wastewater from two wastewater treatment plants of different size. A total of 39 targeted compounds were quantified by liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. The number of prescriptions and the defined daily doses for each prescription was obtained from the reference database of The Catalan Health System to validate the wastewater-based approach. The wastewater sampling and the data inquiry were both executed during the same period (October 2019) and standardised for comparison to treatments per 1,000 inhabitants per day. The back-calculation parameters were impr...
Source: Environment International - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Environ Int Source Type: research