RAPID: COVID-19?s Impact on the Urban Environment, Behavior, and Wellbeing

Engineering - SARS CoV2, the coronavirus responsible for the global severe acute respiratory syndrome pandemic (COVID-19) represents a major threat to the health and welfare of the public. Currently the US death toll is nearing 30,000 and estimates exceeding a hundred thousand fatalities if the spread of the virus continues unchecked. Public health interventions including strict shelter in place rules have been put in place across the US and globally to limit the spread of the virus through communities. This has had a dramatic impact on the economy, with millions of people becoming unemployed in the immediate aftermath of the interventions. The goal of this RAPID project is to develop the science for rapid assessment of how public health interventions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are impacting the environment, human behavior, and the wellbeing of the public. This goal will be achieved through detailed characterization of various biomarkers of environmental health and wellbeing in wastewater collected in the service area of people living in Tempe, Arizona. The information collected will be available to city officials, other community stakeholders, and the public using an online platform for emergency response. The resources developed in this project will inform the Nation of the impacts of shelter in place and assist crisis management and decision makers in managing these interventions.

The goal of this project is to employ detailed high-resolution analysis of wastewater together with geospatial modeling to develop a rapid assessment of environmental health at the community level during the mandated health interventions in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. The study will take place in Tempe, Arizona, a city of 185,000 people. Baseline data on environmental quality and human behavior and health have been collected by the research team for the past two years leading up to the pandemic. A transdisciplinary team consisting of an environmental engineer, a virologist, and a bioinformatician will study environmental and human health impacts associated with the global pandemic and the public health interventions implemented in the city in response to the outbreak using this unique data resource. Urban wastewater will be sampled daily during the shelter in place intervention for analysis of a broad spectrum of compounds and biomarkers using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Analyses include the types and quantities of air pollutants, medications taken as a result of fever and viral infections (e.g., ibuprofen), allergy suppressants, stimulants and depressants (such as nicotine and alcohol), drugs of abuse, dietary markers (indicating potential food shortages), and general biomarkers suggestive of human wellbeing and health status (e.g., antidepressants). US census data will enable an interpretation of study findings using demographics and population-size data relevant for crisis management and evidence-based decision making by scientists, city planners, mayors, health agencies, healthcare providers, and policy makers.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.