PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Epidemiol.
Sec. Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology
This article is part of the Research TopicEpidemiological Insights and Methodologies in Wastewater Surveillance: Focusing on Low-Resource Communities and Confined PopulationsView all articles
Wastewater Surveillance in the Military: How deployed members of the armed forces can monitor outbreaks on military vessels
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, El Paso, United States
- 2The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler, Tyler, United States
- 3West Texas A&M University, Canyon, United States
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This perspective piece explores the potential to implement wastewater surveillance on military vessels to improve disease monitoring and prevention. We examine five key topics: (1) recent studies of wastewater surveillance on military bases and training centers; (2) best practices for confined populations (e.g., colleges, prisons, hospitals, and low-income and middle-income countries) and their transferability to military settings; (3) current technologies enabling deployed personnel to conduct wastewater surveillance without advanced microbiological training; (4) key questions the military should address to prevent future outbreaks on vessels; and (5) unique ethical considerations surrounding implementation. This work aims to inform military decision-makers considering the adoption of wastewater surveillance programs.
Keywords: pathogens, Microbiology, SARS-CoV-2, wastewater, low-income and middle-incomecountries, Colleges and universities, disease monitoring
Received: 18 May 2025; Accepted: 21 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gitter, Mena, Crum and Butler. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Erick Butler, ebutler@wtamu.edu
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