While wastewater surveillance can be performed through sewer manhole passive samplers, influent composites, or primary settled solids, the timing component of these samples is largely unknown. Here, we focused on determining the primary clarifier solids retention times (SRTs) at two full-scale wastewater treatment plants in Southeast Michigan.

This work was presented at ISFEV in Tokyo in June 2024 and AEESP in May 2025 in Durham, NC. and will be published in Summer 2025.

We monitor human adenovirus (HAdV) types 3, 4, 7, 14, 21, 40/41, and pan in wastewater settled solids and compare the wastewater signal to clinical cases. A recent outbreak of HAdV-4 in the local community prompted this work to determine if we could detect the outbreak in wastewater and engage with community stakeholders about respiratory adenovirus outbreaks.

This work was presented at ISFEV in Tokyo in June 2024 and is published now in Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology as part of the themed collection "Wastewater Surveillance of Disease: Beyond the Ordinary".

Our team currently monitors for SARS-CoV-2, Influenza A and B, RSV, Norovirus, Rotavirus, Adenovirus, and Mpox. We are also currently developing methods for new viruses to monitor in wastewater. Please check out our dashboard here for live updates and comparisons between wastewater data and clinical indicators. 

We meet with our community stakeholders once per month to inform them on any changes to the dashboard or important trends. This work was also presented at various poster sessions throughout Southeast Michigan.

When measuring viruses in wastewater for the purpose of public health surveillance and community trends, it is critical to understand what we are measuring more mechanistically. Here, we determined that the virus capsid is a critical component to virus persistence in wastewater, and that encapsidated RNA and DNA persisted orders of magnitude longer than extraviral RNA and DNA at room temperature. 

This work was presented at the Borchardt Conference, AEESP Conference, and WEFTEC in Summer 2023 and is also published in Environmental Science & Technology and was featured in "Advances in Wastewater-Based Epidemiology in the ES&T Family of Journals". 

Pathogen removal through wastewater treatment is determined by the number of log-10 removal values we can measure and the CT value for disinfectants with a residual that can be measured. Here, we explore virus crediting for sub-residual ozone treatment and propose new frameworks for disinfectants without a measurable residual.  This work is part of a larger EPA grant on alternative crediting frameworks for under-credited treatment processes in collaboration with Trussell Tech, SNWA, and Drexel University. 

This work was featured in The University Record.  

Due to their size, viruses are particularly difficult to measure in complex water matrices. It is valuable to measure viruses in real-time for water treatment operations and public health mitigation. We used flow cytometry to measure viruses (termed flow virometry) and compared removal of viruses through filtration using molecular methods, culture methods, and flow virometry.

A review of flow cytometry was published in Current Opinion in Biotechnology and this work is in preparation.

Disinfection of viruses through various treatment processes such as free chlorine is important to the protection of public health. Here, we show that virus capsids protect viral genomes from disinfection and that double-stranded RNA and DNA genomes are less reactive with free chlorine than single-stranded RNA and DNA genomes.

This work was published in Environmental Science & Technology. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a national and global shortage of N95 respiratory masks that helped prevent the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through respiratory droplets. We tested multiple methods for N95 mask disinfection in order to reuse masks for healthcare workers in periods of shortage. Our method to decontaminate masks with heat and humidity was recommended to the University Health System and used to treat masks and a large University Hospital to reuse them.

This work was featured in the media and published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases and mSphere. 

When triclosan was banned from over-the-counter soaps in 2016, it was often replaced with quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) such as benzalkonium chloride (BAC). Here, we found that benzalkonium chloride was also linked to increased antimicrobial resistance and selected for antibiotic resistance genes and antibiotic resistant bacteria in a source water for drinking water.

This work was presented at numerous poster sessions and was published in Environmental Pollution. 

Aging drinking water infrastructure constructed from metals may lead to corrosion of pipe material and therefore corrosion inhibitors are a crucial addition to prevent metals from leaching into drinking water. However, we found that corrosion inhibitors also apply selective pressure on the microbial communities from source water and select for metal resistance and antibiotic resistance to several antibiotic classes. 

This work was presented at numerous poster sessions and was published in Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology.