A review paper by colleagues in the ESWS WG focuses on the more technical aspects of a tricky topic that often attracts public debate over ethical and privacy concerns – the use of wastewater surveillance to provide insights into illicit drug use.
Analysis of drug biomarkers in wastewater can provide population-level information: but conventional analytical methods are often expensive and time-consuming. Biosensor technology is a promising tool for detecting illicit drugs in complex wastewater matrices, offering significant advantages in speed, specificity, and cost-effectiveness over conventional analyses. The review examines key biosensor platforms and highlights their capacity to rapidly and selectively detect target drugs or metabolites in complex wastewater matrices. It addresses the principal challenges of biosensor deployment, including sample matrix interference, sensor fouling, and the need for calibration and standardisation. It also identifies some critical research gaps, such as further miniaturisation, multiplexed detection, and integration with the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analytics.
Prof Zhugen Yang, who leads the ESWS WG said: “Merging wastewater-based epidemiology techniques with biosensor innovation promises more efficient, adaptable, and community-focused solutions for tracking trends in drug use, life style for health monitoring and informing public health policy”.
Co-authors Prof Yang and Prof Frederic Coulon are also partners in the EBIC Flexible Funding project on Development of Peptide/Aptamer-Based Biosensing Platforms for Real-Time, Ultrasensitive Detection of PFAS, led by Dr Dr Dhiman Chakravarty. For more information on the work of Prof Zhang’s Group at Cranfield see here.
Advances in Biosensor Technology for Illicit Drug Detection Enable Effective Wastewater Surveillance. Xu, Q., Guo, Y., Niu, G., Wu, H., Coulon, F. and Yang, Z., 2026. Chem & Bio Engineering, 3(2), pp.87-103. https://doi.org/10.1021/cbe.4c00188
