Environment & Public Health

A rapidly changing environment brings new health challenges, and UArizona faculty address these issues through interdisciplinary projects, ranging from managing public health crises, to water and food contamination, to the connections between health and climate change.

Our research

Arizona researchers are launching a project in Yuma County aimed at understanding the community spread of the coronavirus by studying the area’s wastewater.

The Covid-19 virus can be picked up in wastewater before it’s found in a clinical setting and researchers in a new study say this could be really useful for tracking new mutations of the virus, like the B.1.17 strain that is now widespread in the U.K. and has already been introduced in the U.S.

It's in the wastewater: How Arizona universities are testing for COVID-19

Northern Arizona University wanted to test campus wastewater for traces of COVID-19, a process that can serve as an early-warning system for new outbreaks.

OU researchers looking to use wastewater to stop spread of COVID-19

University of Oklahoma researchers are working to slow the spread of COVID-19 with a unique approach -- using wastewater.

Wastewater testing could offer clues about COVID-19 infections

What most see only as sewage, Daniel Gerrity sees as an opportunity to collect data.

Dog ticks may get more of a taste for human blood as the climate changes

An experiment suggests potential for greater spread of tick-borne illness as temperatures rise

 

Canadian researchers turn to wastewater tests at long-term care homes to detect COVID hot spots

'It could be like a smoke detector,' said Ottawa researcher Robert Delatolla

Testing sewage can give school districts, campuses and businesses a heads-up on the spread of COVID-19

November has brought encouraging news about several COVID-19 vaccines. But members of the general public will probably not be vaccinated before the spring or summer of 2021 at the earliest. Americans will be living with this pandemic for some time to come.

Watching What We Flush Could Help Keep a Pandemic Under Control

The failure to control the coronavirus pandemic has in many ways been a failure of real-time health data.

UArizona could shut down Tumamoc Hill again if mask use doesn’t increase

The University of Arizona could close Tumamoc Hill to hikers if more people don't start wearing masks.