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Unless you are of Asian decent, All you have is the flu. If you still are all that concerned, Just stay home and bring ur life to an end. There is no other sure way too save the planet.....
I must recommend TWiV 737 that interviewed a team who took a different approach with some New York sewer surveillance, so they could track the evolution of the SARS-CoV-II virus. ua-cam.com/video/LqGPuFoYiNY/v-deo.html Very interesting to hear from the science point of view, for example, that Omicron was in New York sewers before it was found in South Africa (although, processing time means it was found in SA before it was known in NY)
would love to see some tunnelling stuff. what the considerations are, how it is achieved and some fails. one of my favs from a quite a while back was seeing the state of Heathrow airport after a collapse during creation of a new underground link.
We've been using wastewater monitoring to track illicit drug use here in Australia, for some time now. I will say that its not the best feeling though to hear that your state has the highest use of methamphetamine in the country, based on sewage sample data!
It probably won't make you feel any better to know that those numbers can be from production rather than use. Labs are often built away from the user base and waste products get flushed.
I heard that the UK (London, maybe) found a ton of SARMS (pseudo-steroids) in their wastewater, but don't remember where I heard it. Gym bros, be careful with that stuff.
Apparently one of the common ways of normalizing sewage concentrations against population (and dilution) is to measure the concentration of an extremely durable pepper virus, pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV). People eat enough chili and sweet peppers that this can be used as a very rough baseline indicator of how much fecal matter originally entered the waste stream.
Doesn’t pepper consumption vary greatly from season to season? And do all peppers have this virus consistently? I had expected there to be something more reliable. Maybe human sex hormone concentrations or something.
I know they set up hundreds of lift station samplers throughout my county, they were very careful to keep the data from being too refined. a neighborhood, yes, a building no. one of my clients was in upper management for the program run at the state level. as he is a privacy advocate, he made sure to keep things from being too specific. very cool system.
This has nothing to do with the medical field. Don’t confuse the health field with medicine. This isn’t even biomedical engineering. In fact this is all civil engineering.
In Sydney Australia sewage monitoring was an early part of the covid dashboard. It often highlighted outbreaks in suburbs days before any actual positives were reported. The sewage analysis was an important tool in directing health authorities to where they needed to promote testing campaigns and notifications.
In New Zealand too. I still remember the one person in Warkworth who wouldn't fess up to having Delta. They could see a tiny amount of covid in the wastewater, but no one came forward.
@@RPostWVU It does if the septic tank only has one active user. That's not all that uncommon in my area. I don't know what the benefit would be, though. The advantage of sewage testing is aggregate efficiency, but it's a very inefficient way to test an individual. It also won't work with a septic tank as well. A septic tank combines several steps of the sewage treatment process, and this testing is done in the early part of the sewage treatment process. What people put in their septic tanks is a mix of enzymes and anaerobic bacteria meant to break down the effluent.
@@Merennulli I would bet there really are cases where police seek warrants for septic tanks in order to search for something specific. Like, if they have probable cause to believe important evidence was flushed. And that could presumably include bags of drugs. That said, I've never actually heard of it. But yeah, drug testing the sewage of one individual sounds pointlessly complicated.
@@EebstertheGreat I just meant for this kind of testing, but you are absolutely right. I don't know about flushed things, but I know septic tanks are always checked with missing persons cases.
In addition to the random saliva testing of students and staff, the University in our city was regularly sampling the waste water around their dorms to try to gauge infection rates. It was much higher than previously assumed by city's municipal officials. However, the school is also notorious for partying - even during the pandemic, which certainly did not help to contain the spread. Appreciate that you went in on the ethics of sampling waste water.
@@Br3ttM You seem to forget the advanced age of some of their professors and of the University staff. The students may not have been at risk, but their behavior endangered the people around them.
I'm glad he dipped into the ethics, this was the first thing I thought of, because that's inevitably how operations work out in the States; either the government and/or some big corpos look to get their hands on it
I remain hopeful and optimistic of the scientific opportunities but nevertheless my ears are open to the ways a data collection like this could be used unethically..here’s another one he didn’t mention. Does your population show a higher propensity towards unhealthy choices (the molecules/compounds you could test for this could be a very long list) well if you live here health insurance is more expensive…not incredibly invasive but a crack in our personal privacy that can effect the corporate bottom line.
There were some drug busts in a coastal town near the town I lived in where the flow of waste water from the houses under surveillance was "filtered" with what was essentially a pool net. The Sheriff's department would announce their search warrant as a chainsaw was used to cut through the waste water pipe leading to the septic tank, the net held at the break waiting on the drugs to be flushed.
Don't remember where this was but they found that almost all drugs had a huge bump in use Friday, increased a bit more Saturday, tapered off Sunday, and dropped right back down for the remaining weekdays. All drugs except for coke, which was consistent all week long.
I have to wonder what specific and unique data the Las Vegas strip has to offer! ua-cam.com/video/yR2lgxy-htU/v-deo.html This would be interesting to see as an annual summary.
The director general of health here in New Zealand talked about sewage surveillance quite regularly. they collected samples from a number of sites around the cities and could pinpoint Covid outbreaks down a general part of the city. we had huge periods of time with no infections so as soon as covid showed up it informed the course of action. Edit: Lol @ Brown Mirror.
The part about a "weather" forecast for infections is just genius. It's an easy and informed way for every single individual to decide whether they want to risk it. I think it would greatly contribute to the average person acting differently throughout a pandemic.
Excellent stuff, Grady. I really enjoy the amount of info you impart on any video’s chosen subject, without it turning into just another boring monologue of stats and facts. As I said… excellent. 👍
We used waste water monitoring throughout most of the pandemic here in Australia. It was very prominent during our 'covid zero' phase where it would provide early warning for any cases making it through quarantine and the public health teams would ask people in those areas to get tested asap. It helped catch many cases before it spread!
This. Especially in WA, as recently as this past January we had the health department putting out a release for people to test from certain suburbs if they had symptoms as there were “unexpected detections”. If they knew people had developed COVID after returning from other places (and hence isolating) it was tagged as an expected detection, but it made it quite easy for us to know if we needed to be super vigilant.
When I was a cop, it there was going to be a big drug bust, we'd try to stop up the outgoing sewage pipes, and cut off the water, so they couldn't flush massive amounts down the toilet.
8:35 This was exactly the situation I thought of about 3 minutes into the video as a potential worry around this technique. I appreciate that you're giving it the proper consideration it deserves.
My local public health unit has been posting the covid count in waste water on their web site for a while now. It's a pretty noisy signal, but got better when they normalized it against another poop signal so various dilution events affected the count less.
Here in New Zealand, where I think most people would call the COVID-19 response pretty good, we heard a lot about wastewater surveillance for COVID in the news.
Black mirroring is exactly what we are doing in China and Hong Kong, where sewage discharge of a single building is checked for Covid 19 virus. If present, the whole building is seal off and everyone goes through mandatory test for infection.
Practical Engineering is the one of the best channels on UA-cam! Haven't missed one video, it's all extremely interesting. Thanks again for another great video
One of your better videos, Grady. I love your optimistic, energetic delivery of what could be quite dry material. The section on "surveillance" was enlightening: aggregated data at population scale seems harmless enough, but neighborhood or smaller scale data collection-and sale-is a disturbing thought … and probably already a reality.
great video. Let me add that the proof of concept was already published in 2015 by my research group in Paris. By using wastewater, we monitored norovirus and show the good relationship with acute gasto enteritis (Prevost et al Environment international 79, 42-50). We also observed the diversity of strain, who was helpful to understand the "real" diversity of norovirus strains. We started again in April 20 but this time for SARS CoV 2, and after the publication of KWR, MIT and ours work, WWBE approach exploded in the community.
8:15 it’s nice to see those points being raised! I feel like most videos I watch are in the vein of “this new technology is incredible” and never explores those issues.
Grady you've done it again with the serendipitous timing of your topics. I just joined a project at work where I'm helping to sample sewers for Covid in Detroit, MI. Awesome video as always; I swear I'm one of your biggest fans!!!!!
I would believe that the variation of concentration of contaminants in the sewer is correlated to the variation of concentration of solids in the sewer: if it rains and solids are diluted, other contaminants are diluted too. So when the correlation breaks it means there is a change at the source of contaminants.
"I can give you a one sentence rundown" Boy howdy, that's a heck of a sentence. Must have taken a long time to build that sentence up! "Wastewater flows in sewers, primarily via gravity, combining and concentrating as it continues to a treatment plant where a number of processes are used to rid it of concomitant contaminants so it can be reused or discharged back into the environment."
I wanted to read more about this. It is unfortunate that there are no sources in the description. Thanks for thr video, your content is amazing and your camera energy is very entertaining 🙂
That's classifed information. Kind of like how drug companies that made the shot were keeping things secret on the make up of different batches of the same shot.
I've been in contact with the engineering professor at the University of Kentucky (I work for CAER, actually) and got to review an early manuscript of three publication. Really interesting stuff! About nauseating, but neat! I also share an office with one of the guys who assisted with sampling.
I remember a similar concern was mentioned in a video from "Journey to the micro cosmos". Where they explained why they gathered sink microbe samples from public and anonymous doner instead of using their own home's
Our campus did this for all the residential and academic buildings! Then every day they sent out a notification of buildings that had exposures according to the wastewater. Then you could take measures if you were in that building!
Excellent video as usual. Reminds me of the observation, you can tell more about people from their garbage than from what they claim they eat, drink, consume etc.
Anything that can monitor public health, without having to rely on self-reporting humans is a massive bonus. People forget, people misremember, and people lie.
@@jamesengland7461 Public health is the government's business. _"To ... promote the general Welfare"_ is plainly stated as one of the foundational goals of the US government.
@@VitalVampyr does not even remotely mean that. The rest of the Constitution makes it abundantly clear that such "power" is prohibited, though we're at least a half century beyond having thrown the Constitution out with the trash, so it's a moot point.
@@jamesengland7461 Please quote the text of the Constitution which makes it clear that a city is prohibited to analyze the contents of their sewer system.
@@VitalVampyr the constitution is a list of powers granted to the government not a list of powers removed. That said ammendments 9 & 10 basically state that all left kver rights and powers are reserved to the states and people, so without going into a much deeper reseach dive and analysis I'm leaving it as "undefined" for what powers a city has. Realistically, as long as standard patient confidentiality practice and minimum sewer shed sizes are used (so you have to be averaging atleast 1000 units for example) then most of the privacy concerns can be mitigated. I think the technology has more potential for benefit than harm iff you restrict how granular the info is and who gets access. (Ideally only the public health departments and treatment plant operators have access to the data)
I was just just thinking about something like this in your earlier video: our purified water depends on what is filtered out at a current moment, and most importantly what is not yet filtered out. This video is just an answer for that.
Water, electricity, gas, sewer, phone, cable, and don't forget adding the address to the postal system, property tax system, and other intangible connections needed. The physical utility company will not want to install a connection to a new house unless the legal and financial infrastructure is in place first. Maybe a joint video with someone else to cover the non-engineering aspects.
that's pretty scary imo! Read the comments & you'll see that the 2 western countries with the best covid response (Aus/NZ), everyone knew all about it right from the start, cause of how extensively it was used & information from it shared with the community to control covid
I work in news. We have covered the wastewater surveillance here in Minnesota a lot. Especially when the U and Met Council started monitoring the Twin Cities wastewater.
Great video. This is one of my favourite UA-cam channels. Love the content. I especially love how you look at the ethics side here as well... because you know if SOMEONE can monetize something, they will :) I can't wait for your book to release (I've pre-ordered it :) ) Keep up the great work Grady!
Big brother is always watching, even when you're dropping a deuce. In Michigan they require samples of septic tanks when dumped for testing along with addresses it originated for reporting to the government. I could definitely see them using the info to gain search warrants if they were actually interested in cracking down on drugs.
"Any future new virus, heaven forbid". Well, Monkeypox isn't per se new, but there were simultaneous outbreaks on multiple continents as this video was published.
In the Boston area I've been following the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority stats for most of the pandemic. They tend to show increases in COVID spread before the test stats (or hospitalizations/deaths of course) begin to tick up.
very brilliant stuff.... the fact that you brought up PRIVACY when it comes to the sewage contents (and not when it comes to MAKING the sewage) shows that this planet has a REAL ISSUE with companies overstepping boundaries... I DO NOT CONSENT. I WILL NOT COMPLY. (to allowing some nameless, faceless company steal my dookie-data - it's MINE! lol)
I don't know a precise definition of 'clusterfuck' to say for certain... but you don't have to go back far from here to find slavery, bloodletting, witch burning, and human sacrifice in exchange for divine blessings. I think we're doing alright.
I watch quit a few of your videos and the info adds to my knowledge base. I was a bit suprised about *all* the things that are tested for but it does make alot of sense. Especially tracking virus spikes. Never really thought about illegal drugs but that is mainly tracking users or non users who've discovered a cache and rather than implicate a loved one they dump the evidence.
Rural folks still visit city restrooms like walmart, restaurants, libraries, schools, ect. Its just that is as good as it gets for this method for them because if you thing sampling at the treatment plant is a breach of privacy, testing at the single home septic tank is a million times worse. (And also more complicated that just asking directly for medical tests that will be far more accurate for an individual)
IT breaks up in the water flow and becomes just a weak slurry, pretty much before it leaves the household. Then it travels all the way to the plant as that slurry. When it comes to viruses - they are broken up and are no longer infectious pretty fast. But the tests still detect the genetic fragments.
@@robertbackhaus8911 thanks for the reply, my question and the reasoning was less about the turd and more about how accurate I'm real time they can calculate infection or spread of "X" from time of flush to useful information... if community waste takes 2 days to make it to where they sample and it takes 3 days for the results to come back
@@ikengrow Likely measured in minutes to hours. If the rate of flow were lower the sewer system would essentially be a storage system. The waste pipes in your house for example are dry except when actively draining something. By the time they reach a sewer main for a neighborhood there are probably enough waste sources to make up a constant flow, the speed of which would only be limited by the slope and gravity.
Grady, You don't often tickle my funny bone, and that's totally fine since there's so much interesting stuff around us everyday that I never really considered in detail, but man.... 'Brown Mirror', lol! When you swing, you swing for the fences!
They use monitoring of sewage here in New Zealand to detect prevalence of drugs and also other diseases. So they can see areas of the city with the most drug use or STDs even.
I used to install monitors inside sewer systems to try and capture data for I&I (inflow/infil). I have to say that the hardware for this quickly broke down due to H2s gas and just the shear nastiness of the environment. Saying that taking in pipe measures is no easy task. Also think about that one person who need to physically install that equipment.
🧠Get ahead in your career or studies: brilliant.org/PracticalEngineering
📖 Preorder "Engineering In Plain Sight: An Illustrated Field Guide to the Constructed Environment" - practical.engineering/book
Unless you are of Asian decent,
All you have is the flu.
If you still are all that concerned,
Just stay home and bring ur life to an end.
There is no other sure way too save the planet.....
Love this channel, it's content and professionalism in presentation.
I must recommend TWiV 737 that interviewed a team who took a different approach with some New York sewer surveillance, so they could track the evolution of the SARS-CoV-II virus.
ua-cam.com/video/LqGPuFoYiNY/v-deo.html
Very interesting to hear from the science point of view, for example, that Omicron was in New York sewers before it was found in South Africa (although, processing time means it was found in SA before it was known in NY)
Pre-ordered the same week you posted the video announcing it.
would love to see some tunnelling stuff. what the considerations are, how it is achieved and some fails. one of my favs from a quite a while back was seeing the state of Heathrow airport after a collapse during creation of a new underground link.
"Literal stream of data" Took such a nice approach to that. I'd have gone with something like "Crapload of data"
*no pun intended
Later followed up by "brown mirror"
"Brown mirror" made me simultaneously laugh and grimace at the same time! Nice work Grady.
Same. Now I can't decide between the Like and Dislike buttons. 🤣
I will like and subscribe to Brown Mirror
It took me by surprise and I laughed out loud!
It was a crappy pun ;)
Such a straight up delivery, too
We've been using wastewater monitoring to track illicit drug use here in Australia, for some time now. I will say that its not the best feeling though to hear that your state has the highest use of methamphetamine in the country, based on sewage sample data!
I think they do that everywhere
so if I'm gonna do drugs I should piss in the back yard for awhile after? Good to know thanks 😳🤫
It probably won't make you feel any better to know that those numbers can be from production rather than use. Labs are often built away from the user base and waste products get flushed.
I heard that the UK (London, maybe) found a ton of SARMS (pseudo-steroids) in their wastewater, but don't remember where I heard it. Gym bros, be careful with that stuff.
@@killerbug05 They would need to get a sample from your house, what is pretty unlikly, but would be possible
Apparently one of the common ways of normalizing sewage concentrations against population (and dilution) is to measure the concentration of an extremely durable pepper virus, pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV). People eat enough chili and sweet peppers that this can be used as a very rough baseline indicator of how much fecal matter originally entered the waste stream.
Ooh that's really interesting, thanks for this added info!
Doesn’t pepper consumption vary greatly from season to season? And do all peppers have this virus consistently?
I had expected there to be something more reliable. Maybe human sex hormone concentrations or something.
@@Mike-oz4cv Great questions, and I have the same concerns. I would hope they're using multiple concentration markers that don't co-vary too much.
That's amazing, basically using PMMoV concentration as an internal standard.
I know they set up hundreds of lift station samplers throughout my county, they were very careful to keep the data from being too refined. a neighborhood, yes, a building no. one of my clients was in upper management for the program run at the state level. as he is a privacy advocate, he made sure to keep things from being too specific. very cool system.
I've never been so interested in sewage since watching this channel
It's genuinely interesting... on paper & in design. In person... still interesting but a while lot less palatable!
Do we have a future Civil Engineer on our hands?
T-Shirt design: NWSS logo on the front. Data Contributor on the back. I'd buy it.
As a nurse, it's not every day I get to see my two favorite subjects (medicine and engineering) merge into one video! Nice job Grady!
I imagine you didn't add in "poop" to that merge as its probably already included in nursing.
This has nothing to do with the medical field. Don’t confuse the health field with medicine. This isn’t even biomedical engineering. In fact this is all civil engineering.
@@Rmadden727 lol. Public health is within the scope of the medical field.
@@RPostWVU trust me, had plenty of code browns. 💩
Yeah this has nothing to do with medicine
In Sydney Australia sewage monitoring was an early part of the covid dashboard. It often highlighted outbreaks in suburbs days before any actual positives were reported. The sewage analysis was an important tool in directing health authorities to where they needed to promote testing campaigns and notifications.
Too bad the federal gov of australia is an incompetent mess of conservatism
The Australian covid politics are especially known for their appropriate character...
I am not sure if COVID infections can be deduced accurately since a lot of disinfectants/soaps are used. It would muddle the data signicantly.
@@ulrichraymond8372, exactly. Especially since the vrus has yet to be isolated.
In New Zealand too. I still remember the one person in Warkworth who wouldn't fess up to having Delta. They could see a tiny amount of covid in the wastewater, but no one came forward.
I can already see the DEA pulling warrants for people's septic tanks.
Woah, smart.
That doesn't narrow down to a single person, unless you can fish out a single solid with DNA and drugs.
@@RPostWVU It does if the septic tank only has one active user. That's not all that uncommon in my area.
I don't know what the benefit would be, though. The advantage of sewage testing is aggregate efficiency, but it's a very inefficient way to test an individual.
It also won't work with a septic tank as well. A septic tank combines several steps of the sewage treatment process, and this testing is done in the early part of the sewage treatment process. What people put in their septic tanks is a mix of enzymes and anaerobic bacteria meant to break down the effluent.
@@Merennulli I would bet there really are cases where police seek warrants for septic tanks in order to search for something specific. Like, if they have probable cause to believe important evidence was flushed. And that could presumably include bags of drugs. That said, I've never actually heard of it.
But yeah, drug testing the sewage of one individual sounds pointlessly complicated.
@@EebstertheGreat I just meant for this kind of testing, but you are absolutely right. I don't know about flushed things, but I know septic tanks are always checked with missing persons cases.
This is an absolute testament to human ingenuity. I love these sewage videos. Thank you Grady.
In addition to the random saliva testing of students and staff, the University in our city was regularly sampling the waste water around their dorms to try to gauge infection rates. It was much higher than previously assumed by city's municipal officials. However, the school is also notorious for partying - even during the pandemic, which certainly did not help to contain the spread. Appreciate that you went in on the ethics of sampling waste water.
College age people aren't at significant risk of serious illness from the virus. It would be more dangerous to send them all home.
@@Br3ttM You seem to forget the advanced age of some of their professors and of the University staff. The students may not have been at risk, but their behavior endangered the people around them.
Yeah imagine a disease that we have to test waste water to even know we have it.
I'm glad he dipped into the ethics, this was the first thing I thought of, because that's inevitably how operations work out in the States; either the government and/or some big corpos look to get their hands on it
I'm surprised you used "or" some big corps... It's definitely both, they're all in bed with each other.
And here I was thinking that's a treasure trove of data, sample everything, but not to prosecute, just to monitor virus ;)
I remain hopeful and optimistic of the scientific opportunities but nevertheless my ears are open to the ways a data collection like this could be used unethically..here’s another one he didn’t mention. Does your population show a higher propensity towards unhealthy choices (the molecules/compounds you could test for this could be a very long list) well if you live here health insurance is more expensive…not incredibly invasive but a crack in our personal privacy that can effect the corporate bottom line.
@@devinmahoney3777 Universal Healthcare solves the insurance problem.
They get that from your cellphone anyways.
There were some drug busts in a coastal town near the town I lived in where the flow of waste water from the houses under surveillance was "filtered" with what was essentially a pool net. The Sheriff's department would announce their search warrant as a chainsaw was used to cut through the waste water pipe leading to the septic tank, the net held at the break waiting on the drugs to be flushed.
"operation turd-catcher is ready for deployment sir"
Joe Friday wouldn't be happy with the new meaning of Dragnet.
What country?
that is a unique user name.
More 1984-level authoritianism and surveillance. Yet people will applaud as long as they aren't the ones affected.
"Brown Mirror"... That must have taken a couple takes to say without giggling!
Excellent content as usual, Grady!
Badum-tss
The hardest part about 15 days to flatten the curve is the first 18 months
We're rounding the turn and bending the corner. 👌🖐☝ok? Operation warpspeed is bringing on the vaccines.
Don't remember where this was but they found that almost all drugs had a huge bump in use Friday, increased a bit more Saturday, tapered off Sunday, and dropped right back down for the remaining weekdays. All drugs except for coke, which was consistent all week long.
I have to wonder what specific and unique data the Las Vegas strip has to offer!
ua-cam.com/video/yR2lgxy-htU/v-deo.html This would be interesting to see as an annual summary.
Lmao
The director general of health here in New Zealand talked about sewage surveillance quite regularly. they collected samples from a number of sites around the cities and could pinpoint Covid outbreaks down a general part of the city. we had huge periods of time with no infections so as soon as covid showed up it informed the course of action.
Edit: Lol @ Brown Mirror.
In an attempt to further ensure my on- and offline privacy I am hereby committing to only shitting into a hole I dug in the garden.
Be civilized, use an outhouse.
@@jasonreed7522 I believe that's called a shitshed
So there’s laboratory testing and… lavatory testing?
Seweillance?
@@lordkittener9164😂
I find your material to be the best written and produced videos on UA-cam. I'm always learning something new when watching. Amazing work. Keep it up!
The part about a "weather" forecast for infections is just genius. It's an easy and informed way for every single individual to decide whether they want to risk it.
I think it would greatly contribute to the average person acting differently throughout a pandemic.
Excellent stuff, Grady. I really enjoy the amount of info you impart on any video’s chosen subject, without it turning into just another boring monologue of stats and facts.
As I said… excellent. 👍
We used waste water monitoring throughout most of the pandemic here in Australia. It was very prominent during our 'covid zero' phase where it would provide early warning for any cases making it through quarantine and the public health teams would ask people in those areas to get tested asap. It helped catch many cases before it spread!
This. Especially in WA, as recently as this past January we had the health department putting out a release for people to test from certain suburbs if they had symptoms as there were “unexpected detections”. If they knew people had developed COVID after returning from other places (and hence isolating) it was tagged as an expected detection, but it made it quite easy for us to know if we needed to be super vigilant.
Wow, this is like most communist thing I’ve read today.
When I was a cop, it there was going to be a big drug bust, we'd try to stop up the outgoing sewage pipes, and cut off the water, so they couldn't flush massive amounts down the toilet.
@@leftfootsam in Australia, we don't live in communes.
Aren’t you guys literally putting positive Covid people in camps????
8:35 This was exactly the situation I thought of about 3 minutes into the video as a potential worry around this technique. I appreciate that you're giving it the proper consideration it deserves.
"Maybe it would be called Brown Mirror" Well Done Sir
Renamed the entire series. Genius!
My local public health unit has been posting the covid count in waste water on their web site for a while now. It's a pretty noisy signal, but got better when they normalized it against another poop signal so various dilution events affected the count less.
"A sewershed is not an outhouse." --- I'll never get that out of my head!
Here in New Zealand, where I think most people would call the COVID-19 response pretty good, we heard a lot about wastewater surveillance for COVID in the news.
Black mirroring is exactly what we are doing in China and Hong Kong, where sewage discharge of a single building is checked for Covid 19 virus. If present, the whole building is seal off and everyone goes through mandatory test for infection.
the "brown mirror" joke caught me off guard. Well Done!
This is my life as a laboratory operator for a sewage plant. Too bad nobody shares the same interests with me. I love seeing these videos!
If you bottle the sewer smell and sell it in a fancy perfume store for 150 USD. Would you buy it? Asking for a friend
Practical Engineering is the one of the best channels on UA-cam!
Haven't missed one video, it's all extremely interesting.
Thanks again for another great video
One of your better videos, Grady. I love your optimistic, energetic delivery of what could be quite dry material.
The section on "surveillance" was enlightening: aggregated data at population scale seems harmless enough, but neighborhood or smaller scale data collection-and sale-is a disturbing thought … and probably already a reality.
Such a great channel, such a great teacher! Spaces like this keep the dream of an educational internet alive. Thank you for all you do!
great video. Let me add that the proof of concept was already published in 2015 by my research group in Paris. By using wastewater, we monitored norovirus and show the good relationship with acute gasto enteritis (Prevost et al Environment international 79, 42-50). We also observed the diversity of strain, who was helpful to understand the "real" diversity of norovirus strains.
We started again in April 20 but this time for SARS CoV 2, and after the publication of KWR, MIT and ours work, WWBE approach exploded in the community.
Well this certainly isn't absolutely terrifying.
8:15 it’s nice to see those points being raised!
I feel like most videos I watch are in the vein of “this new technology is incredible” and never explores those issues.
I so badly want to work in that stock footage lab with _three_ NMR machines.
Grady you've done it again with the serendipitous timing of your topics. I just joined a project at work where I'm helping to sample sewers for Covid in Detroit, MI. Awesome video as always; I swear I'm one of your biggest fans!!!!!
I love that this is after MinuteEarth's video on sewage surveillance. More information for my brain.
As engineers, civil or any other kind, we need to consider ethical dilemmas related to emerging technologies in our field
@02:34 "A sewershed isn't an outhouse."
Particularly if you shed in the woods.
Really like that you included the privacy concerns. We need more of this discussion
i know this is kind of a small thing, but thanks for having good subtitles on your videos! it really helps
This channel is my #1 go-to authority on poo, sewage, gravity and pipes.
I would believe that the variation of concentration of contaminants in the sewer is correlated to the variation of concentration of solids in the sewer: if it rains and solids are diluted, other contaminants are diluted too. So when the correlation breaks it means there is a change at the source of contaminants.
I would imagine they correct for dilution amounts by using water consumption data and rainfall data into account.
8:19 Those lovely properties with sweeping views of the beautiful beach front and sewerage treatment plant 🤣
Gold 👌
"I can give you a one sentence rundown"
Boy howdy, that's a heck of a sentence. Must have taken a long time to build that sentence up!
"Wastewater flows in sewers, primarily via gravity, combining and concentrating as it continues to a treatment plant where a number of processes are used to rid it of concomitant contaminants so it can be reused or discharged back into the environment."
I wanted to read more about this. It is unfortunate that there are no sources in the description. Thanks for thr video, your content is amazing and your camera energy is very entertaining 🙂
That's classifed information. Kind of like how drug companies that made the shot were keeping things secret on the make up of different batches of the same shot.
This is one of the best channels on UA-cam.
Grady I love every show you put out, and I keenly look for the next one you put out. Thank you , and thank you again!
I've been in contact with the engineering professor at the University of Kentucky (I work for CAER, actually) and got to review an early manuscript of three publication. Really interesting stuff! About nauseating, but neat! I also share an office with one of the guys who assisted with sampling.
I remember a similar concern was mentioned in a video from "Journey to the micro cosmos". Where they explained why they gathered sink microbe samples from public and anonymous doner instead of using their own home's
Our campus did this for all the residential and academic buildings! Then every day they sent out a notification of buildings that had exposures according to the wastewater. Then you could take measures if you were in that building!
I dont need to see any NWSS merch, but a "Brown Mirror" coffee mug is an absolute must
Excellent video as usual. Reminds me of the observation, you can tell more about people from their garbage than from what they claim they eat, drink, consume etc.
Anything that can monitor public health, without having to rely on self-reporting humans is a massive bonus. People forget, people misremember, and people lie.
People also have the right to tell government to mind their own business.
@@jamesengland7461 Public health is the government's business. _"To ... promote the general Welfare"_ is plainly stated as one of the foundational goals of the US government.
@@VitalVampyr does not even remotely mean that. The rest of the Constitution makes it abundantly clear that such "power" is prohibited, though we're at least a half century beyond having thrown the Constitution out with the trash, so it's a moot point.
@@jamesengland7461 Please quote the text of the Constitution which makes it clear that a city is prohibited to analyze the contents of their sewer system.
@@VitalVampyr the constitution is a list of powers granted to the government not a list of powers removed.
That said ammendments 9 & 10 basically state that all left kver rights and powers are reserved to the states and people, so without going into a much deeper reseach dive and analysis I'm leaving it as "undefined" for what powers a city has.
Realistically, as long as standard patient confidentiality practice and minimum sewer shed sizes are used (so you have to be averaging atleast 1000 units for example) then most of the privacy concerns can be mitigated.
I think the technology has more potential for benefit than harm iff you restrict how granular the info is and who gets access. (Ideally only the public health departments and treatment plant operators have access to the data)
I'm amazed and mystified that they can detect samples in the whole massive sewage flow, The dilution rate would be overwhelming.
I was just just thinking about something like this in your earlier video: our purified water depends on what is filtered out at a current moment, and most importantly what is not yet filtered out. This video is just an answer for that.
I was part of this! I'm in Buffalo, NY and we collected samples for a local college during the fall semester of 2021.
great video, as always! Love the jingle from Elexive, great find!
Would be interesting to see all the engineering that goes into adding a house to the grid since you need a lot to do that it seems.
Water, electricity, gas, sewer, phone, cable, and don't forget adding the address to the postal system, property tax system, and other intangible connections needed. The physical utility company will not want to install a connection to a new house unless the legal and financial infrastructure is in place first.
Maybe a joint video with someone else to cover the non-engineering aspects.
Grady, one of your best videos. I enjoy hearing you extrapolate concepts to make predictions about the future
"Brown Mirror"... Hahahah! Brady, you crack me up, in addition to educating me. Thanks for another enlightening video! Top shelf.
seriously everyone should watch your videos, you are making such a valuable contribution to public education! thank you!
Orwell would be proud.
i recently did a training at the local water treatment plant and was shocked to hear that they could test how much covid was in the water (sewage).
Search on the internet for the video called watch the water Rumble
that's pretty scary imo! Read the comments & you'll see that the 2 western countries with the best covid response (Aus/NZ), everyone knew all about it right from the start, cause of how extensively it was used & information from it shared with the community to control covid
I work in news. We have covered the wastewater surveillance here in Minnesota a lot. Especially when the U and Met Council started monitoring the Twin Cities wastewater.
Great video. This is one of my favourite UA-cam channels. Love the content. I especially love how you look at the ethics side here as well... because you know if SOMEONE can monetize something, they will :) I can't wait for your book to release (I've pre-ordered it :) ) Keep up the great work Grady!
I didn't know sewer surveillance was so sophisticated. For my personal privacy, I'm delighted to be on a private residential septic system.
I've appreciated my local sewer system for a long time; but I didn't know it was also helping anonymize my personal health data.
Thanks, sewers!
Thank you for pointing out the privacy concerns as well!
"brown mirror" absolutely love it
Big brother is always watching, even when you're dropping a deuce. In Michigan they require samples of septic tanks when dumped for testing along with addresses it originated for reporting to the government. I could definitely see them using the info to gain search warrants if they were actually interested in cracking down on drugs.
This info is great, well presented. Never, but never question the engineer.
"A literal stream of data" got a smile out of me, well done :D
Fantastic video on a very interesting topic!
Here in Israel, wastewater detection identified a polio outbreak in several cities.
"Any future new virus, heaven forbid". Well, Monkeypox isn't per se new, but there were simultaneous outbreaks on multiple continents as this video was published.
how did I miss this absolute gem of a video
there is a universe where brown mirror took off as a hit and that version of me is saying: "I get it,I get it, poop surveillance is sketchy!"
NWSS' new and probably rejected motto: "You poop, we snoop."
In the Boston area I've been following the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority stats for most of the pandemic. They tend to show increases in COVID spread before the test stats (or hospitalizations/deaths of course) begin to tick up.
"Brown Mirror"!! Priceless!
very brilliant stuff.... the fact that you brought up PRIVACY when it comes to the sewage contents (and not when it comes to MAKING the sewage) shows that this planet has a REAL ISSUE with companies overstepping boundaries... I DO NOT CONSENT. I WILL NOT COMPLY. (to allowing some nameless, faceless company steal my dookie-data - it's MINE! lol)
DOOKIEDATA
Cops can already monitor your trash without a warrant
Thanks Grady. I always wondered how this worked. An excellent public health tool.
History will show this period to have been the greatest clusterfuck of all time.
I don't know a precise definition of 'clusterfuck' to say for certain... but you don't have to go back far from here to find slavery, bloodletting, witch burning, and human sacrifice in exchange for divine blessings. I think we're doing alright.
@@MrWhateva10 these are solid points
I watch quit a few of your videos and the info adds to my knowledge base.
I was a bit suprised about *all* the things that are tested for but it does make alot of sense. Especially tracking virus spikes. Never really thought about illegal drugs but that is mainly tracking users or non users who've discovered a cache and rather than implicate a loved one they dump the evidence.
But with one blaring flaw. Most rural households are on a closed septic system, so your samples are only from the city folks.
Rural folks still visit city restrooms like walmart, restaurants, libraries, schools, ect.
Its just that is as good as it gets for this method for them because if you thing sampling at the treatment plant is a breach of privacy, testing at the single home septic tank is a million times worse. (And also more complicated that just asking directly for medical tests that will be far more accurate for an individual)
Odd questions ahead... 1) what's the average distance a turd travels to a treatment plant. 2) how long does that take?
There's quite a few variables....
IT breaks up in the water flow and becomes just a weak slurry, pretty much before it leaves the household. Then it travels all the way to the plant as that slurry. When it comes to viruses - they are broken up and are no longer infectious pretty fast. But the tests still detect the genetic fragments.
@@robertbackhaus8911 thanks for the reply, my question and the reasoning was less about the turd and more about how accurate I'm real time they can calculate infection or spread of "X" from time of flush to useful information... if community waste takes 2 days to make it to where they sample and it takes 3 days for the results to come back
@@ikengrow Likely measured in minutes to hours. If the rate of flow were lower the sewer system would essentially be a storage system. The waste pipes in your house for example are dry except when actively draining something. By the time they reach a sewer main for a neighborhood there are probably enough waste sources to make up a constant flow, the speed of which would only be limited by the slope and gravity.
Grady,
You don't often tickle my funny bone, and that's totally fine since there's so much interesting stuff around us everyday that I never really considered in detail, but man.... 'Brown Mirror', lol!
When you swing, you swing for the fences!
They use monitoring of sewage here in New Zealand to detect prevalence of drugs and also other diseases. So they can see areas of the city with the most drug use or STDs even.
The pause after brown mirror got me lol
doing a proposal on a sewage design and this is a interesting point I will be happy to include, thanks
I used to install monitors inside sewer systems to try and capture data for I&I (inflow/infil). I have to say that the hardware for this quickly broke down due to H2s gas and just the shear nastiness of the environment. Saying that taking in pipe measures is no easy task. Also think about that one person who need to physically install that equipment.
I want that episode of Black Mirror. I need this show to go on forever.
Oh great... how often am I going to have a flush a 'do not track my tossed cookies' notice?
I can't believe this is real. This feels like a completely different world! Awesome work 😁