Funding supports wastewater virus research

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is providing a team of Toledo, Ohio-based Battelle researchers with funding earmarked for wastewater virus research.

“This should give us a reflection of what’s going on in specific neighborhoods,” Battelle Principal Research Scientist Rachel Spurbeck, one of the leaders of the project, said. “It will give us granularity about where infection hotspots are in the city.”

The effort is part of the COVID-19 rapid response program and will last for a year, officials said, adding Battelle has contracted Great Lakes Environmental Center to perform 24-hour automatic wastewater sampling at specific manhole locations around the city.

“It won’t just be descriptive,” Spurbeck said. “It will help us develop a tool for a wastewater pathogen tracking dashboard that shows the distribution of viruses in neighborhoods that will be available to public health agencies.”
The Battelle team will test samples for the SARS-CoV-2 virus and other pathogens as a means of pinpointing specific neighborhoods that are hotspots for viral outbreaks. If the project works as anticipated, it can be expanded to multiple locations in other cities.

Battelle officials said the company conducts research and development, designs and manufactures products, and delivers services for government and commercial customers – serving the national security, health and life sciences, and energy and environmental industries.