An increase in overdose deaths has resulted in the Sedgwick County Health Department working with the City of Wichita on wastewater surveillance. Everything you can imagine comes through this Wichita wastewater plant but the city and county are hoping to identify five high-risk drugs. “From here on in, we’ll be able to begin analyzing that data to show where there might be where there are spikes in the community,” said Sedgwick County Health Director Adrienne Byrne. Through wastewater surveillance, the city hopes to track cocaine, methamphetamines, nicotine, fentanyl and xylazine. Byrne said these samples from the wastewater are sent to the company, Biobot who then tests the water for these drugs. Byrne added, “This cannot identify any particular street, any house, it is the community, the whole community with where the wastewater is going and being sampled.” Once they receive the data, Byrne said it will show if there has been a massive dump of drugs or a spike in usage within that community. She said drug use has been a problem for a long time and added, “Prior to the last five years, the focus really was on methamphetamines, that was the highest used in Sedgwick County in Wichita but fentanyl and other opioids have far surpassed that.”
Source: KAKE – News
