Sewage Is Helping Cities Flush Out the Opioid Crisis

Re:Sewage Is Helping Cities Flush Out the Opioid Crisis by joshe on Monday May 28, 2018 @02:08PM (#17173842)

Biobot Analytics (YC W18) is possibly the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology–affiliated company" mentioned in the article. They will "scour the waste pipes with robots that suck up sewage, measure drug amounts and remotely report the data". http://www.biobot.io/

The Techcrunch write up: https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/these-are-the-64-startups-... mentions "they hope to also measure pharmaceuticals, infectious disease and food consumption".

Infectious disease finding could be really cool. Imagine easily mapping where a zika outbreak was happening an hour after an infected person uses the restroom. That same day you could do mosquito abatement and post flyers to come to the hospital for treatment.

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Re:Sewage Is Helping Cities Flush Out the Opioid Crisis by alexpotato on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @09:46AM (#17179078)

I was reading a book[1] on bacteria phages aka viruses that attack bacteria and they mentioned that in countries that used phages (e.g. Soviet Russia due to a lack of antibiotics), the sewage plant is the first place they would go to look for phages to combat intestinal diseases. There were large amounts of the offending bacteria so it was a prime place to find viruses that had evolved to fight them.

[1] Viruses vs Superbugs https://amzn.to/2IZXZiJ

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