Search

Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (WBE) has become a powerful tool in pandemics, serving as a surveillance strategy. However, there are numerous variables that affect the results obtained from wastewater, ultimately affecting the reliability of the information. These variables include dilution, temperature-related degradation, biomass growth, and other unexplored processes. Current models only consider temperature in their analysis. Furthermore, previous research is focused on few viruses. Hence, more complete models for viral RNA degradation on complex matrices are needed. Direct wastewater indicators identified and quantified by analytical chemistry from human consumption e.g., secondary metabolites from caffeine consumption, hormones, and molecular analysis of enteric viruses, previously unexplored, can be used as not only health indicators but also to help to determine the initial content of viral RNA. This review explores modeling tools, their challenges, and advances in the field of WBE.

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged healthcare systems worldwide. Efforts in low-to-middle-income countries (LMICs) cannot keep stride with infection rates, especially during peaks. A strong international collaboration between Arizona State University (ASU), Tec de Monterrey (TEC), and Servicios de Agua y Drenaje de Monterrey (Local Water Utilities) is acting to integrate wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) of SARS-CoV-2 in the region as a complementary approach to aid the healthcare system. Wastewater was collected from four sewer catchments in the Monterrey Metropolitan area in Mexico (pop. 4,643,232) from mid-April 2020 to February 2021 (44 weeks, n = 644). Raw wastewater was filtered and filter-concentrated, the RNA was extracted using columns, and the Charité/Berlin protocol was used for the RT-qPCR. The viral loads obtained between the first (June 2020) and second waves (February 2021) of the pandemic were similar; in contrast, the clinical cases were fewer during the first wave, indicating poor coverage. During the second wave of the pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 quantification in wastewater increased 14 days earlier than the COVID-19 clinical cases reported. This is the first long-term WBE study in Mexico and demonstrates its value in pandemic management.

Endocrine disrupting chemicals are a group of contaminants that have severe effects on humans and animals when exposed, like cancer and alterations to the nervous and reproductive systems. The increasing concentrations of several endocrine disrupting chemicals in the environment are strongly related to anthropogenic activities, and as the population grows this problem becomes more relevant. Thus, wastewater is one of the main sources of endocrine disrupting chemicals, and the technologies employed during primary and secondary treatment in wastewater treatment plants cannot remove these contaminants. Due to this, researchers have tried to develop more efficient technologies for tertiary treatment of wastewater and reduce the concentration of endocrine disrupting chemicals discharged into the environment. Some of the most promising technologies include adsorption, ultrafiltration, advanced oxidation processes and biodegradation. The use of nanomaterials as adsorbents, catalysts, membranes and supports has played a key role in enhancing the efficiency of these technologies. The results showed that these technologies have great potential on the lab-scale, and even some of them have already been employed at some wastewater treatment plants. However, there are still some challenges to achieving a global implementation of these technologies, related to reducing the costs of materials and enhancing their current performance. The use of biomass/waste derived carbon materials and implementing hybrid technologies are accessible approaches for their implementation in tertiary treatment.

Bionanocomposites based on natural bioactive entities have gained importance due to their abundance; renewable and environmentally benign nature; and outstanding properties with applied perspective. Additionally, their formulation with biological molecules with antimicrobial, antioxidant, and anticancer activities has been produced nowadays. The present review details the state of the art and the importance of this pyrrolic compound produced by microorganisms, with interest towards Serratia marcescens, including production strategies at a laboratory level and scale-up to bioreactors. Promising results of its biological activity have been reported to date, and the advances and applications in bionanocomposites are the most recent strategy to potentiate and to obtain new carriers for the transport and controlled release of prodigiosin. Prodigiosin, a bioactive secondary metabolite, produced by Serratia marcescens, is an effective proapoptotic agent against bacterial and fungal strains as well as cancer cell lines. Furthermore, this molecule presents antioxidant activity, which makes it ideal for treating wounds and promoting the general improvement of the immune system. Likewise, some of the characteristics of prodigiosin, such as hydrophobicity, limit its use for medical and biotechnological applications; however, this can be overcome by using it as a component of a bionanocomposite. This review focuses on the chemistry and the structure of the bionanocomposites currently developed using biorenewable resources. Moreover, the work illuminates recent developments in pyrrole-based bionanocomposites, with special insight to its application in the medical area.

PFAS are a very diverse group of anthropogenic chemicals used in various consumer and industrial products. The properties that characterize are their low degradability as well as their resistance to water, oil and heat. This results in their high persistence in the environment and bioaccumulation in different organisms, causing many adverse effects on the environment as well as in human health. Some of their effects remain unknown to this day. As there are thousands of registered PFAS, it is difficult to apply traditional technologies for an efficient removal and detection for all. This has made it difficult for wastewater treatment plants to remove or degrade PFAS before discharging the effluents into the environment. Also, monitoring these contaminants depends mostly on chromatography-based methods, which require expensive equipment and consumables, making it difficult to detect PFAS in the environment. The detection of PFAS in the environment, and the development of technologies to be implemented in tertiary treatment of wastewater treatment plants are topics of high concern. This study focuses on analyzing and discussing the mechanisms of occurrence, migration, transformation, and fate of PFAS in the environment, as well the main adverse effects in the environment and human health. The following work reviews the recent advances in the development of PFAS detection technologies (biosensors, electrochemical sensors, microfluidic devices), and removal/degradation methods (electrochemical degradation, enzymatic transformation, advanced oxidation, photocatalytic degradation). Understanding the risks to public health and identifying the routes of production, transportation, exposure to PFAS is extremely important to implement regulations for the detection and removal of PFAS in wastewater and the environment.

Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (WBE) is a novel community-wide monitoring tool that provides comprehensive real-time data of the public and environmental health status and can contribute to public health interventions, including those related to infectious disease outbreaks (e.g., the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic). Nonetheless, municipalities without centralized laboratories are likely still not able to process WBE samples. Biosensors are a potentially cost-effective solution to monitor the development of diseases through WBE to prevent local outbreaks. This review discusses the economic and technical feasibility of eighteen recently developed biosensors for the detection and monitoring of infectious disease agents in wastewater, prospecting the prevention of future pandemics.

The pervasive manifestation and toxicological influence of hazardous pesticides pose adverse consequences on various environmental matrices and humans, directly via bioaccumulation or indirectly through the food chain. Due to pesticide residues' continuous presence above permissible levels in multiple forms, much attention has been given to re-evaluating to regulate their usage practices without harming or affecting the environment. However, there are regulations in place banning the use of multiple hazardous pesticides in the environment. Thus, efforts must be made to achieve robust detection and complete mitigation of pesticides, possibly through a combination of new and conventional methods. The complex nature of pesticides helps them to react differently across different environmental matrices. Therefore, highly hazardous pesticides are a risk to human well-being and the environment through enzymatic inhibition and the induction of oxidative stress. Consequently, developing fast, sensitive sensing strategies is essential to detect and quantify multiple pesticides and remove the pesticides present in the specific matrix without creating harmful derivatives. Additionally, the technology should be available worldwide to eliminate pesticide residuals from the environment. There are regulations, in practice, that limit the selling, storage, use of pesticides, and their concentration in the environment, although such regulations must be revised. However, the existing literature lacks regulatory, analytical detection, and mitigation considerations for pesticide remediation. Furthermore, the enforcement of such regulations and strict monitoring of pesticides in developing countries are needed. This review spotlights various analytical detection, regulatory, and mitigation considerations for efficiently removing hazardous pesticides.

Antidepressants are drugs with a direct action on the brain's biochemistry through their interaction with the neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. The increasing worldwide contamination from these drugs may be witnessed through their increasing presence in the urban water cycle. Furthermore, their occurrence has been detected in non-urban water, such as rivers and oceans. Some endemic aquatic animals, such as certain fish and mollusks, have bioaccumulated different antidepressant drugs in their tissues. This problem will increase in the years to come because the present COVID-19 pandemic has increased the general worldwide occurrence of depression and anxiety, triggering the consumption of antidepressants and, consequently, their presence in the environment. This work provides information on the occurrence of the most administrated antidepressants in urban waters, wastewater treatment plants, rivers, and oceans. Furthermore, it provides an overview of the analytical approaches currently used to detect each antidepressant presented. Finally, the ecotoxicological effect of antidepressants on several in vivo models are listed. Considering the information provided in this review, there is an urgent need to test the presence of antidepressant members of the MAOI and TCA groups. Furthermore, incorporating new degradation/immobilization technologies in WWTPs will be useful to stop the increasing occurrence of these drugs in the environment.