A biology professor who played a key role in the early detection of COVID-19 in wastewater, and helped to establish Ontario’s Wastewater Surveillance Initiative (WSI) during the pandemic, has received $1.3 million in funding to advance wastewater-based surveillance methods for monitoring high-risk community substance abuse.
University of Waterloo’s Water Institute member Dr. Mark Servos, Canada Research Chair in Water Quality Protection, has received $900,000 from the NSERC Alliance Advantage fund and an additional $450,000 in provincial funding from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.
New research will advance the detection of opioids and other high-risk substances in wastewater, improving tools for public health monitoring and supporting more effective harm reduction efforts.
Since 2016, Health Canada says there have been 49,105 opioid-related deaths across the country, primarily in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario. More than 8,000 opioid-related deaths were reported in 2023 alone.
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Servos and his collaborators say that preliminary work shows a very diverse group of high-risk substances are detectable in wastewater samples. This includes opioids such as codeine and fentanyl, stimulants such as methamphetamine, MDMA and cocaine, as well as depressants and hallucinogens.
“Many of these substances are also entering the environment, making environmental exposure a growing concern,” Servos announced in a statement. “With this project, we aim to advance our ability to detect these substances more reliably and support public health efforts in a meaningful way.”
The monitoring project will focus on refining analytical methods to detect a wide range of high-risk substances with greater accuracy and explore ways to reduce variability in wastewater data, ensuring results are comparable across regions and timeframes, according to a statement from the University of Waterloo.
Servos will collaborate with co-applicants Dr. Scott Hopkins from the University of Waterloo’s Department of Chemistry and Dr. Maricor Arlos and Dr. Wayne Parker from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
