The Paris Sewer Renaissance: Data, Health and Participatory Science

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.58981/bluepapers.2026.2.15

Published

2026-03-23

Issue

Water & Heritage for Sustainable Development

Section

methodologies and case studies

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Thomas Thiebault, Catherine Carré, Jérémy Jacob

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

The Paris Sewer Renaissance: Data, Health and Participatory Science. (2026). Blue Papers. https://doi.org/10.58981/bluepapers.2026.2.15

Keywords:

water quality, wastewater, chemical contamination, microbial contamination, participatory sciences

Abstract

Aging urban wastewater infrastructure, often overlooked, can become a powerful lever for environmental and public health policy. Through the lens of the Parisian sewer system, this article highlights the growing pressures on sanitation networks – from combined sewer overflows to emerging chemical contaminants – and the limits of current treatment technologies. Yet, it also illustrates how wastewater can serve as a valuable resource. Initiatives like OBÉPINE have demonstrated the feasibility of wastewater-based epidemiology at scale, while participatory initiatives such as those performed in EGOUT show that citizen engagement and scientific monitoring can go hand in hand. Together, these efforts redefine wastewater as more than waste: It is a mirror of collective behavior, a platform for community science and a tool for decision-making. As cities face urgent climate and health challenges, this work calls for policies that reconnect people with infrastructure and invest in data-driven, inclusive approaches to urban sustainability.

Author Biographies

  • Thomas Thiebault, École Pratique des Hautes Études

    Thomas Thiebault is an assistant professor at EPHE-PSL studying the fate of organic contaminants within anthropized catchments with a focus on tracing the uses and practices from environmental and wastewater contamination through the analysis of organic molecules, particularly pharmaceutical products and illicit drugs, based on classical and innovative sampling and analytical methods.

  • Catherine Carré, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University

    Catherine Carré is a geographer and professor emeritus at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, researcher at LADYSS, her work focuses on the relationship between water, water and wastewater networks, and city dwellers in European cities, and on water policies in France and regional and local management of water resources and aquatic environments.

  • Jérémy Jacob, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement

    Jérémy Jacob is CNRS research director at the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences. He was trained as a geologist and organic geochemist and is mostly interested on how the history of climate, ecosystems and human societies are recorded in geological archives.

References

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Thiebault, Thomas, Claire Carré, Gabrielle Bernier-Turpin, Camille Asselin, Anne-Fleur Barfuss, Nicolas Caud, and Jérémy Jacob. 2025. “Using Wastewater to Monitor Suggested Changes in Dietary Intake: A Participatory Experiment.” Journal of Urban Health 102: 872–6. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-025-00992-x.

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