Bangor University is leading an international effort to turn wastewater into an early-warning network for future pandemics and other emerging health threats.
Global Wastewater Day will coordinate a synchronised day of sampling on 31 March 2027. Partners in more than 31 countries have already signed up, with samples analysed for pathogens, antimicrobial resistance, pharmaceuticals and other markers of human and environmental health.
The project grew from lessons learned during Covid, when wastewater monitoring showed that population-level disease signals could often be detected without testing every individual. Organisers want lower and middle-income countries to be able to participate too, with training and shared laboratory capacity built into the programme.
The long-term ambition is a permanent global monitoring network. Sewage is unlikely to win many beauty contests, but as a collective biological signal it contains an extraordinary amount of information about what is happening in a population before hospitals necessarily see the full picture.