Sewage-Sniffing Robots May Be the Solution to City Opioid Crises
Date Posted: November 12, 2019
Posted In: Discussion,
From Smart Cities Dive: Mike Bajorek, deputy town manager for Cary, N.C., was once a stranger to the opioid crisis. “Up until Thanksgiving last year, if you’d asked me if Cary had an opioid problem, I would have said, ‘What’s an opioid?'”
But upon returning to work after the holiday a year ago, the town’s fire chief alerted other leaders that the department had responded to five opioid overdoses that weekend, and three were fatal. That launched deeper conversations among leaders in the town of 162,000 residents, and it led to the mayor’s admission that, like a growing number of large and small communities across the country, Cary had an opioid problem.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the national rate of fatal opioid overdoses rose to nearly 20 people per 100,000 in 2016 — a 17% jump since 2015 — and the crisis is growing. Last month, President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. Yet a lack of funding from the federal level has tasked local governments with finding solutions in their cities, fast.
“Cary is one of the safest cities in country. But when the mayor says [opioids are] a top priority, we heard him loud and clear,” Bajorek said. The mayor’s call to action prompted town employees from a variety of departments to brainstorm approaches to mitigate the problem.
Leaders focused on a solution that a handful of other municipalities are considering but few, if any, have significant experience with: using drug-detecting robots to fight the opioid crisis at the street level. Or more accurately, below the street level, considering that the robots are designed to work their magic in the sewer system.
Sewer science
The practice — sewage or wastewater epidemiology — involves studying metabolite excretions, also called biomarkers, in the urine and feces found in sewage. It gained popularity in the United States in 2001, and the public largely became aware of this type of research when media outlets reported on the amount of antidepressants and hormones detected in America’s wastewater. Since that time, researchers have taken to the sewers to research a number of substances.
“Monitoring sewage for drugs, including illicit drugs and drugs of abuse, serves as the most direct means known for revealing which drugs are being collectively used by a community,” an EPA spokesperson told Smart Cities Dive. “It is also possible to calculate the average per capita usage in order to compare usage rates across cities or countries.”