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The four Nordic cities included in the present study form a gradient both in climate, from oceanographic temperate in Tórshavn at 620 N to arctic in Tromsø at 69.70N, and in population, from less than 6000 inhabitants in Sisimiut to close to 120 000 in Reykjavík. The cities are different and far apart but products from the sea has been mainstay to the economy and societal development. Thus, the management of sewage from the municipalities must maintain a clean and healthy marine environment.
DAM, M. AUOUNSSON, G. POULSEN, H. BERG, I. KRISTENSEN, L. STENERSEN, J. JOENSEN, F. DAVIDSEN, V. PETERSEN, S. (2017): Micropollutants in Wastewater in four Arctic Cities - is the Treatment sufficient?. Copenhagen: TemaNord URL [Accessed: 02.08.2018]Critical online article about scientists testing feces and urine in wastewater to find trends in illegal drug use.
FARAH, T. (2017): The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs is a new Form of Mass Surveillance. Motherboard URL [Accessed: 02.08.2018]This paper is a review of clinical data in Kivalina, Alaska. The authors obtained washeteria closure dates from 2003 to July 2009 and defined 7 day closure as prolonged. They received de-identified data on all Kivalina clinic visits from 2003 to 2009 and selected visits with ICD-9 diagnosis codes for respiratory, skin, or gastrointestinal infection; subsequent same patient/same illness-category visits within 14 days were excluded. The authors compared annual visit rates, for all ages combined, before (20032004) and after (20052009) the ‘‘2004’’ storm.
THOMAS, T.K. et al. (2013): Washeteria closures, infectious disease and community health in rural Alaska. A review of clinical data in Kivalina, Alaska. In: International Journal of Circumpolar Health: Volume 72 URL [Accessed: 02.08.2018] PDFOnline article about US researchers that uncover trends in infectious diseases through analyzing wastewater samples.
KRISCH, J. A. (2014): What our Sewage can teach us. The New York Times URL [Accessed: 02.08.2018]This article seeks to present the latest evidence on the provision of adequate sanitation, to analyse why more progress has not been made, and to suggest strategies to improve the impact of sanitation, highlighting the role of the health sector. It also aims to show that sanitation work to improve health, once considered the exclusive domain of engineers, now requires the involvement of social scientists, behaviour change experts, health professionals, and, vitally, individual people.
DUNCAN, M. et al. (2010): Sanitation and Health. In: PLoS Medicine: Volume 7 URL [Accessed: 02.08.2018] PDFIn 2017 this Europe-wide study, which includes around 60 cities in total, revealed a picture of distinct geographical and temporal patterns of drug use across European cities. Twenty one cities have participated in at least five of the annual wastewater monitoring campaigns since 2011, which allows for seven-year time trend analysis of drug consumption based on wastewater testing. Following the success of this initial study, comparable studies were undertaken over the following four years, covering up to 19 European countries in 2017.
Johnson introduces the "Special Issue" increasing the evidence-base for informed, effective and collaborative research strategies in the North.
JOHNSON, R.M. (2012): Addressing challenges in participatory research partnerships in the North. opening a conversation. In: International Journal of Circumpolar Health: Volume 71 URL [Accessed: 02.08.2018] PDFThis online article summarizes the study of NEWTON, R. J. et al., 2015: Sewage Reflects the Microbiomes of Human Populations, In: mBio, Vol. 6 (2).
PENNISIS, E. (2015): Pollution, Human Health tracked with Sewage Microbes. Science Online URL [Accessed: 02.08.2018]In this review, the authors highlight relevant data and describe an initiative through the Arctic Council’s Sustainable Development Working Group to characterize the extent of WASH services in Arctic nations, the related health indicators and climate-related vulnerabilities to WASH services. With this as a baseline, efforts to build collaborations across the Arctic will be undertaken to promote innovations that can extend the benefits of water and sanitation services to all residents.
HENNESSY, T.W. and BRESSLER, J.M. (2016): Improving health in the Arctic region through safe and affordable access to household running water and sewer services. an Arctic Council initiative. International Journal of Circumpolar Health URL [Accessed: 02.08.2018] PDFPresentation held by Wayne Parker, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Waterloo, Ontario.
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The sewage epidemiology approach was applied to a one-year sampling campaign in the largest wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in Belgium to estimate the consumption of illicit drugs (e.g. cocaine). This manuscript shows that sewage epidemiology provides consistent and logical results and that it is a promising tool that can be used in addition to classical studies to estimate illicit drug use in populations.
VAN NUIJS, A. L.N. et al. (2011): Sewage Epidemiology — A real-time Approach to estimate the Consumption of illicit Drugs in Brussels, Belgium. In: Environment International: Volume 37 , 612-621. URL [Accessed: 02.08.2018]This policy summary refers to the most recent AMAP assessment which looks at a wide range of chemicals newly and recently detected in Arctic ecosystems. These ‘chemicals of emerging Arctic concern’ should be considered potential candidates for future research or monitoring and possibly for consideration under relevant global and/or regional regulations. In addition, these chemicals of emerging concern contribute to an even broader understanding of how Arctic pollution is changing.
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This book addresses the most important issues in the field of pharmaceuticals in the environment for the near future. Typical examples and abundant data are presented.
KUEMMERER, K. (2004): Pharmaceutcals in the Environment: Sources, Fate, Effects and Risks - second Edition. Springer Berlin Heidelberg URL [Accessed: 02.08.2018]When people take drugs, they end up in the water, either unchanged or broken down into specific metabolites. Increasingly, water can be tested to gauge how much drug use is going on in an area, and a new study shows that the level of illegal drugs being used in a community can be tested in real time, and potentially applied to help police narcotic use.
MAIN, D. (2014): Real-time Wastewater Analysis shows what drugs are being used where. Popular Science URL [Accessed: 02.08.2018]This paper conducts a scoping review on traditional foods and food security in Alaska. Google Scholar and the High North Research Documents were used to search for relevant primary research using the following terms: “traditional foods”, “food security”, “access”, “availability”, “utilisation”, “Alaska”, “Alaska Native” and “indigenous”. Twenty four articles from Google Scholar and four articles from the High North Research Documents were selected. The articles revealed three types of research approaches, those that quantified traditional food intake (n=18), those that quantified food security (n=2), and qualitative articles that addressed at least one pillar of food security (n=8).
WALCH, A. et al. (2018): A scoping review of traditional food security in Alaska. In: International Journal of Circumpolar Health: Volume 77 URL [Accessed: 02.08.2018] PDFThis paper presents the results of a pilot project testing rainwater harvesting in a water-insecure indigenous community of 140 people in Coastal Labrador in subarctic Canada. It builds on previous research on water insecurity impacts in the community and identifies domestic rainwater harvesting (DRWH) as a small-scale, inexpensive potential remedy.
MERCER, N. and HANRAHAN, M (2017): “Straight from the heavens into your bucket”: domestic rainwater harvesting as a measure to improve water security in a subarctic indigenous community. In: International Journal of Circumpolar Health: Volume 76 URL [Accessed: 02.08.2018] PDF