Calibrating antimicrobial resistance influent and effluent signals in wastewater systems

Abstract

Here, in this Perspective, we discuss how the detailed measurements of microbial hazards generated by wastewater surveillance remain fundamentally underdetermined: they quantify variation without resolving the biological states they represent. This limitation is particularly evident for antimicrobial resistance, where large-scale monitoring is advancing in the absence of parameters that link wastewater concentrations to population-level burden and environmental risk. This Perspective explores how the interpretation of wastewater surveillance data is constrained by the lack of key biological parameters linking measured microbial hazards, including antimicrobial resistance, to population burden and environmental risk.