Analysing waste water may assist census takers

YOU ARE what you eat, the saying goes. It therefore follows that what you excrete gives away a lot about you. Writ large, that information might yield useful demographic clues about particular neighbourhoods. This, at least, is the thinking behind a study by Saer Samanipour of the University of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. Dr Samanipour has been analysing sewage, and has shown that it gives a pretty good profile of an area’s population.To make sure that his analysis reflected the most up to date demographic information Dr Samanipour timed it to coincide with a census. The one he chose was that conducted in Australia, in 2016, so he called on the assistance of a group of colleagues from the University of Queensland.