The WSU Humanities Center invites faculty, students, staff, and the community to a Brown Bag talk given by Lance Gable (Professor, Law) on the topic of the "The Future of Wastewater Screening for the Public's Health".

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has invited dramatic investment in and expansion of wastewater surveillance. This surveillance may enable early detection of an increasing presence of COVID-19 in the community. But the same technology may simultaneously or soon be turned to other uses, including for drug interdiction, community wellness, or environmental monitoring. This presentation considers the legal and ethical dimensions of wastewater surveillance. Wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 sentinel surveillance can be well justified, provided guidelines are established ex ante for public health response to monitoring results. Other uses of wastewater surveillance infrastructure, however, may raise substantial privacy concerns, particularly if this infrastructure becomes denser and correspondingly more granular in the data it discloses.

This event will be hybrid; RSVP to stream.