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Comment by decasia | Hacker News Reader

I think it's really interesting that wastewater is a source of so much sheer information. I never knew before Covid that you could do public health surveillance against wastewater contents. I wonder how local you can make it — like does the data collection and analysis have to be "per city" or can it be "per neighborhood".

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It's been used in Australia for decades, for public health monitoring (various pathogens) and estimating drug use etc.

It can be refined to "upstream of collection point" - what that means depends upon the wastewater sewerage map of the region in question, often estate developments will all pipe to a common outflow from that estate that then joins a larger wastepipe.

How that plays out in any specific city will depend on the utility map.

One man’s trash is another man’s (data) treasure :-)

How long until the technology is cheap and small enough that municipalities sell access to the pipes out of each house, to data brokers?

I imagine in most cities it's illegal already to have a septic system if there is public sewage available.

I think it can be done per waste water treatment plant.

If the scientists are motivated enough, they can trace a virus all the way to your place of business.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02996-y

There's an urban legend that if POTUS is travelling overseas, he craps in a portable toilet, so that enemy spies can't analyze his shit. But last time I looked there was only one website saying that this is the case.

Nowadays I've read that Putin does this too, but I'm guessing that's an urban legend as well.

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