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Wastewater-based epidemiology is an emerging field that has mostly been applied to investigate consumption of illicit drugs. In this study, the wastewater-based epidemiology approach was employed to study consumption of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) and measure their prevalence of use in eight densely populated, urban areas of Beijing, China. Ammonium loads were used to estimate the population equivalents of each sewershed. These estimates were applied to calculate population-normalized antibiotic consumption and prevalence of use during flu season, when antibiotics are frequently misused as a medical treatment. Results indicated that 21.9 g d⁻¹ (10⁴ people)⁻¹ of ten popular antibiotics were consumed across the eight sewersheds, indicating that 1.98‰ of the 12.5 million population equivalents used these antibiotics during the sampling period. A comparison of these …