UC Merced's Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center has embarked on an innovative partnership with university researchers who can track an entire community’s health and habits with samples of human sewage.
The project aims to determine trends and levels of nicotine use in San Joaquin Valley communities through chemicals in wastewater. Collecting hard data on smoking and vaping can aid NCPC’s mission to help local public health agencies, community organizations and tobacco-control researchers give informed responses to the problem.
Traditional methods of collecting data about nicotine use, such as surveys and phone calls, often suffer from low response rates and difficulties in connecting with hard-to-reach populations.
Tobacco is a significant health concern in the Valley’s rural areas. The prevalence of cigarette smoking among rural adults in the United States was reported at 28.9%, notably higher than the general adult population's 11.5% in 2021. Smokeless tobacco also is used more extensively in rural areas than in urban communities.
The persistent popularity of vaping, especially among younger users, makes it all the more challenging to educate people about nicotine’s health dangers and to influence effective policies against the availability and sales and nicotine products.
NCPC, part of UC Merced’s Health Sciences Research Institute, was created in 2018. In 2024, it earned a $3.9 million grant from the University of California’s Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, extending NCPC’s work for at least four years.
The UC tobacco research program also is the source of three $50,000 grants the NCPC can award for pilot research projects . The first went to the wastewater-detection project, led by UC Merced environmental engineer Professor Colleen Naughton.
We continue to have significant gaps in reliable measurements of how many people smoke or use other tobacco products in the San Joaquin Valley. This could help fill those gaps.
Naughton is working with UC Merced environmental engineering Professor Marc Beutel and San Diego State University public health Professor Eunha Hoh. The project will start by collecting wastewater from two cities in Merced and Stanislaus counties and from the UC Merced campus. Sewage samples will be analyzed for nicotine metabolites over a span of several months, allowing researchers to observe trends and patterns of use.
“You can see if it’s increasing or decreasing at certain times of the year. You also can see if your interventions are working, based on whether concentrations rise or fall,” said Naughton, who expects to have the pilot project running by this summer.
Public health Professor Arturo Durazo, NCPC’s director, said detecting nicotine levels in wastewater can establish a new model for tracking actual substance use.
“We continue to have significant gaps in reliable measurements of how many people smoke or use other tobacco products in the San Joaquin Valley. This could help fill those gaps,” Durazo said. “From there, perhaps the research could extend to other substances such as cannabis, alcohol or fentanyl.”
Naughton and her FEWS-US lab gained wide attention during the COVID-19 pandemic when they developed the first global dashboard for wastewater monitoring of SARS-CoV-2, the COVID virus. Wastewater-based epidemiology expanded around the globe during the pandemic. The Naughton lab’s @COVIDPoops19 account on X, formerly known as Twitter, shared findings from multiple continents.
Today, Naughton co-leads Healthy Central Valley Together, which monitors wastewater in Merced, Stanislaus and Yolo counties to track diseases and infections such as influenza, hepatitis, candida and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
Durazo said the remaining two $50,000 grants will be awarded once a year for early career investigators who want to do pilot research that can help shape tobacco and nicotine policies. The work by Naughton and her successors can lay the groundwork for more extensive, federally funded research.
