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Neb. (KOLN) – Every flush of your toilet provides the Lincoln-Lancaster County <a href="https://healthylife7.com/the-six-signs-of-good-mental-health-according-to-psychologists/” title=”The six signs of good mental health, according to psychologists”>Health Department with a critical piece of information about the public’s health, ranging from information about pathogens like measles and COVID-19 and drug use
The Health Department was recently part of a national wastewater surveillance study that tracked the use of illicit substances in our communities, run by wastewater-based epidemiology company Biobot Analytics. Cities were given their data about drug monitoring in less than two weeks. Following the study from 2023 and 2024, LLCHD has picked up monitoring for illicit substances again, beginning in November of 2025
“At first it was methamphetamine, cocaine, xylazine, fentanyl, those certain substances and nicotine as well,” Tommy George, the Public Health Epidemiology Supervisor at the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department said. “We’ve grown to also include illicit and prescription opioids, and then also substances used for substance disorder treatment.”
While no public dashboard for this information exists yet, 10/11 asked LLCHD for information collected since this testing began
Today, data is collected daily from Lincoln Transportation and Utilities’ Theresa Street Facility. Every 30 minutes, 72 millimeters of processed wastewater are collected in a tub and tested for pathogens and drug use
“We take that data and then we share it with a variety of stakeholders, internal and external,” George said. “Internal stakeholders might be like the director’s office or an opioid task force that we have working on overdoses in the community. And that includes some public stakeholders and other departments like law enforcement and emergency medical services
When questioned about the ethics of this, George said there is no way to know who is contributing to the sample
“Some people are concerned it might be identifiable. It’s not. The wastewater comes to a central location that represents tens of thousands of people,” George said. “It’s all aggregated together in a composite sample. Then we analyze that composite sample, so it’s de-identified by nature.”
Who isBiobot?
“We are a spinoff out of MIT, and we were founded with a mission of transforming wastewater infrastructure into public health observatories,” Co-Founder and CEO Mariana Matus explained
Matus believes wastewater monitoring will transform the speed with which public health agencies can take action. Processing and turnaround times for drug monitoring are typically less than two weeks, shorter than monitoring
“Imagine being able to act early,” Matus said. “We are still in the early days, but we believe that one day this type of infrastructure will exist in every city and every town, not just in the U.S. but globally.”
More on Biobot’s Research
Biobot published their latest report, “A nationwide wastewater monitoring pilot to identify legal and illegal substances and enable future substance use research,”on June 11, 2026. The research was headed by Peter R. Chai, Kaitlyn Hess, Marisa A. P. Donnelly and Mariana Matus
Lincoln was one of the 76 locations in 41 states that shared your wastewater with researchers working on the study. Researchers wrote “From September 2023 to August 2024, biweekly sampling yielded over 1,500 unique wastewater samples, many from previously unsampled communities.” Those locations could view their results for cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, xylazine (an animal tranquilizer) and naloxone in less than two weeks
The quick turnaround time allowed cities like Laredo, Texas to create and deploy a “knock and talk” campaign to spread awareness about the dangers of fentanyl-laced cocaine and distribute naloxone, or Narcan
The study showed regional fluctuations for most drug use, while methamphetamine levels remained stable across the four regions. In the Midwest, cocaine, fentanyl and xylazine showed a slight dip over the course of the study; methamphetamine use rose and plateaued; and Narcan peaked halfway through the study and gradually dropped off
“Public health departments, harm reduction organizations, clinicians, and other stakeholders addressing the substance use epidemic need tools and approaches to visualize and interpret wastewater-based epidemiology substance use data within the local context of the communities they serve,” researchers wrote. “Combined these insights can help position reeir positioning and effectiveness over time.”
Matus believes a national wastewater database could give early hints to a changing illicit drug environment
“Everybody has a voice in the sewer,” Matus said
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