A collections system playing a role in the fight against drug abuse? That’s what is happening in Cary, North Carolina.
The town is setting up a system that will test wastewater from clusters of about 5,000 people to identify what drugs are being used. The data will be made available to outside researchers for analysis, and it could drive how the town goes about implementing programs to combat opioid abuse as well as monitoring how effective programs are.
“By identifying an area that has 5,000 or so people and capturing the wastewater there, we can add demographic indicators — socioeconomic, age and
