Persistence of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy infectious agent in sewage

► Persistence of BSE agent over 265 day as environmental contaminant in sewage. ► Progressive decay in PrPRes detection: 150 day in sewage needed for 2 logs reduction. ► Conversely, no infectivity decay after 150 day in sewage. ► Inactivation dynamics of PrPRes and infectivity in sewage are different. ► Prediction models based on BSE PrPRes fail to predict BSE infectivity decay in sewage.