Science Friday - A Space Suit To Turn Pee Into Water | A Bitcoin Mine Causing A Health Crisis In Texas

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

Researchers developed a prototype of a space suit that could replace the high-absorbency diapers that astronauts wear on space walks. And, a bitcoin mine's cooling fans are so loud they rattle windows. Residents of Granbury, Texas, are having migraines, panic attacks, and hearing loss.A ‘Dune’-Inspired Space Suit To Turn Astronaut Pee Into WaterOn the International Space Station, resources are precious. That includes every single drop of water—which is why astronauts drink their own filtered and recycled pee. That might sound a little undignified, but things get worse when astronauts go out for a space walk. If nature comes calling, their only option is a super-strength diaper.Inspired by the stillsuits that recycle water in Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ series, researchers have come up with a way to keep astronauts clean, dry, and hydrated while they’re hard at work. They’ve designed a system that turns astronauts’ pee into nice, clean drinking water while they’re suited up.The researchers reported on their prototype in the journal Frontiers in Space Technology. Guest host Rachel Feltman talks with Sofia Etlin, a researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine, about the inspiration behind the stillsuit and how it works.A Noisy Bitcoin Mine Is Causing A Health Crisis In A Texas TownFor the past several years, there’s been constant hype about AI, bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies. We’ve learned that it takes a massive amount of energy, water, and other resources to run the data centers that make these technologies possible, putting climate goals at risk. But these buzzy technologies could have an impact on public health, too.Residents of the small town of Granbury, Texas, say bitcoin is more than just a figurative headache. Soon after a company opened up a bitcoin mine there a couple years ago, locals started experiencing excruciating migraines, hearing loss, nausea, panic attacks, and more. Several people even ended up in the emergency room. The culprit? Noise from the mine’s cooling fans.Guest host Rachel Feltman talks with Andrew Chow, technology correspondent at TIME, who investigated the health crisis in Granbury.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

When a Bitcoin mine moved into a small Texas town, a public health crisis ensued. We're talking total heart stoppages, severe, severe migraines that one woman likened to being worse than childbirth, panic attacks, chest pain. It's Wednesday, July 24th. It's also Science Friday. I'm John Dankosky. Technologies like AI and Bitcoin take a massive amount of energy, water, and other resources to run. But there's a public health component to this tech boom, too, and the technology. the culprit behind these scary symptoms might surprise you. We'll dig into it. But first, on the International Space Station, resources are precious, including, yes, astronaut pee, which gets filtered into clean drinking water. But when astronauts are out for a spacewalk and nature comes

calling, all they've got is a super strength diaper. At least for now, here's guest host Rachel Feldman. Inspired by the still suits that recycle water in Frank Herbert's Dune series, researchers have designed a system that turns astronauts pee into nice, clean drinking water while they're suited up. The researchers reported on their prototype in the journal Frontiers in Space Technology. Joining me today is Sophia Etlin, a researcher at Wild Cornell Medicine in New York. Sophia, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Rachel. Thank you. So tell me, has astronaut pee always been top of mind for you, a burning research question?

I don't know for who it's been, but I would say that Frank Herbert has been thought of mind for perhaps too long. And the dream of making a still suit or of turning like science fiction into a reality has been part of my life, you know, since I started getting into, into reading science fiction. And when I was in high school and then after I took a gap year, I spent all that time developing the still suit. I knew that there would be some form of utility to it, but I wasn't sure how or where it would fit in. And I'm also a big space nerd. And I knew of Dr. Christopher Mason, who has done incredible work when it comes to Ash Not Well-Being. I sort of cold emailed him out of the blue. And he gets back to me and he says, did you know that it's at the time of 2020 and

astronauts wear diapers? And so it was sort of this beautiful moment of putting everything together where this thing that I've been wanting to build for such a long time could actually truly benefit someone. Yeah. Wow. What an awesome backstory. So how does the system actually work? It's a three-part system. We have the part that collects the, urine from the astronaut's body, and then the part that filters it, and then the part where all that now filtered urine is collected. And so originally in the 70s, when only men were allowed to be astronauts, we had condom catheters as the primary mechanism, right, of urine collection. And then when women were suddenly allowed to go to space, they sort of haphazardly like stumbled

onto the solution of an oversized diaper. But not, that was never the like original intention for waste management within spacesuits. Right. We develop an external catheter cup with a male and a female version that could then collect that urine in a like non-invasive manner and then pass it through a membrane filtration system. And and the reason that we decided to do a membrane system is because it's forward and reverse ismosis. So the forward is most part of it is, is, purely biosmotic pressure, no power required, which is lovely for us. And that's where we get our urine brine. So what's urine brine? Imagine if you have a cup of urine and you leave it out in the sun for a very long time and all the water is gone. Urine brine is all the things in your urine that, you know,

make it stink, basically. Got it. Returning to our members. So we have this four-dermostis system, right where just by osmotic pressure, the water travels via this membrane into this salt solution. And then from that salt solution, we then do need battery power to pass it through another membrane to get rid of that salt, at which point that filtered water then returns to an insuit drinking bag. Currently, astronauts do have an insuit drinking bag. It contains less than a liter of water to drink for spacewalks that can last up to 12 hours. And it has been a source of complaint for astronauts over and over and over again. So we've redesigned it so I can hold more water given, you know, the, I suppose, bladder conditions of each astronaut so that we're then, you know,

sort of tackling two birds with one stone here and boom, you know, we fix both with, thank God for Frank Herbert. You know, you are clearly a sci-fi nerd as am I and as are many of our listeners, I think. So how does it feel to have created something inspired by Dune and to to have it formally published and out there in the world. It sort of is what science fiction is for, no? Like to inspire and to create. And while space exploration and settling might be sort of far off, being able to build towards that direction

and re-understand what it means to be, like, an astronaut, re-understand what it means to be a person who is allowed to go to space. I think is sort of something that I really wanted to get at. because we're not sending the healthiest people in the world of space anymore, right? It's not the 100 pages of regulation where if you've ever had a broken pinky, you can't go to the ISS, right? Now you have real people with real problems and we have to start taking that into account. If we ever want to make this in any way, shape, or form equitable, whether it be in 10 or 20 or 30 years. Yeah. No, it's a, that's a really awesome goal. And one that I'm sure,

Frank Herbert would approve of. Sophia, thanks so much for joining me. This has been great. Thank you so much, Rachel. Sophia Etlin is a researcher at Wild Cornell Medicine in New York. In the last few years, it's been impossible to escape celebs and influencers and companies hyping up Bitcoin, AI, cryptocurrencies, all that stuff. And we've learned that it takes a massive amount of energy, water, and other resources to run the data centers that make these technologies possible. But all of this buzzy tech could have an impact on public health, too. Residents of the small town of Granbury, Texas, say Bitcoin is more than just a figurative headache for them.

Soon after a company opened up a Bitcoin mine there a couple years ago, locals started experiencing excruciating migraines, hearing loss, nausea, panic attacks, and more. Several folks even ended up in the emergency room. And the culprit behind these symptoms may surprise you. It's all the noise. For Time Magazine, technology correspondent Andrew Chow investigated the health crisis in Granbury. He joins me now. Andrew, welcome to Science Friday.

Hi, Rachel. So, Andrew, you visited Granbury for yourself. Can you describe the sounds we're talking about that are coming from this Bitcoin mine? So to basically describe it very plainly, a Bitcoin mine is a server farm running thousands of computers that are using to uphold and safeguard the Bitcoin system. And they create new Bitcoin as well. For all these computers running all day, all night, they need a lot of cooling. And so a lot, a lot of fans are attached to basically the outside of these makeshift. structures that are emitting a whirring hum all the time.

Now, there are a lot of people who hear that and are like, oh, well, I, you know, run a fan at night or I use some sort of white noise machine. But I was down in Granbury for a week and I found that this noise was quite different. There was a sort of visceral vibrating effect that it had where residents are complaining that it is vibrating sort of through their walls, vibrating their window panes, that they can actually feel the shaking in their beds. It's also not a sort of constant noise, but it goes v-v-m-v-m. I think what is really the problem is the nighttime noise. It's waking people up from the dead of sleep. Then they're getting stressed out. They can't get back to sleep. So I think,

and from what I've heard from doctors, is that is sort of a crucial part of what may be contributing to the health impacts here. Yeah, I definitely want to get into that medical aspect. in a bit. But just for context, how loud are we talking in decibels? So I accompanied a local constable who has been tracking the noise of this Bitcoin mine, and I watched him record a peak of 91 decibels on his reader. Oh, wow. This is right across the road from the mine. There are a couple of residences where it was basically felt that loud to me on other properties. The CDC says that 90 decibels is, you know, somewhere around a chainsaw or a lawnmower. And that's sort of what it felt like to me being there.

Yeah. Yeah. I know a blender is like 80 decibels. And I think a lot of people don't realize is that every 10 decibels is a 10x increase in. It's not a linear scale. So. Right. Yeah. And what do we know about at what? what point noise is so loud that it becomes dangerous? Yeah. So there is a growing field of scientific study devoted to the health impacts of noise, particularly scientists looking at, you know, if you live under an airport or if you live next to a highway.

One of the leaders in this field is the German cardiologist Thomas Munzel, who's been running controlled studies, both on rodents and humans. So with rodents, it's a little easier for him to actually see what's going on in the brain and sort of trace what he says is causation. He says he did find vascular dysfunction and oxidative stress from loud noises. There was another study in which he exposed young healthy students, this is human students, to noise events up to 63 decibels during the night and found that their vascular function diminished very quickly. Munzel told me that basically there are two levels that we should be thinking about. So if a noise is

over 90 decibels, it has the potential to damage our ears. So that's when you're getting tinnitus and potential hearing loss. And there are some folks in Granbury who have documented hearing loss over the last couple years, a ton of folks who have tinnitus and fluids leaking from their ears. Wow. But then on a lower level, Dr. Munzel says even that noise between 50 and 60 decibels, especially at night, you know, can stress your cardiovascular systems leading to high cortisol levels or sympathetic nervous system activation. And sort of you're getting different downstream effects if this noise is sustained, it's stressing you out, it's causing you to lose sleep. And that, he says, can lead to, you know, blood pressure going up and making you higher at risk for

diabetes and cholesterol and all sorts of, you know, down draft symptoms. it can just spiral. In your piece, you mentioned that there are people who have actually ended up in the emergency room for problems that they think are related to this noise. Yeah, so we're talking heart palpitations. We're talking, you know, total heart stoppages, migraines, severe, severe migraines that one woman likened to being worse than childbirth, panic attacks, chest pain. it's really, really hard to pin any specific person's symptoms to the noise of the mind.

Of course. It's basically impossible at this point. All that I can do is, you know, go down there, talk to as many people as I can. So I spoke to over 40 people who said they had symptoms, over 10 people who had been to the emergency room, and try to track sort of some of the similarities of these symptoms. And in speaking with the folks down in Granbury, how are they dealing with the noise pollution? They hate it.

I just want to say that first of all. That's understandable, I think. Beyond, you know, the 40 people I talk to personally, there was a petition of over 800 handwritten signatures for people saying that they had some sort of complaint, if not medical, just at least, you know, quality of life related with the mine. There are some people that are moving away, just because they can't take it anymore. There are a lot of other people who feel like they can't,

whether it's because they feel like their property values have tanked because no one will want to live near this thing or because they have family roots. They've always lived there. You know, they're inherited their father's house. They can't afford other places. This is not, you know, a wealthy part of Texas by any stretch. Isn't there, you know, any kind of federal law regulating noise pollution at this level?

It's funny because in the 1970s, there was written a federal mandate to control noise and basically said loud noise is harming us as a country. But that initiative was essentially deregulated during the Reagan administration. Since then, it's been up to states and counties to regulate noise. Texas is unique in that, A, it has the highest noise threshold out of any state in the nation. It's 85 decibels is when a noise is deemed unreasonable as opposed to much lower thresholds in other states. One noise expert basically told me that this is a threshold that protects the noise polluting as opposed to the noise polluted. And the second thing that's going on is that counties in Texas, if you're outside city limits, you're basically not allowed to pass a noise ordinance. So the residents, you know, they've been trying to stump their local legislators.

The legislators, they acknowledge this is an issue, but they say their hands are tied. The residents are exploring maybe can they bring some sort of nuisance lawsuit against the company, but that would really take months and months to work through the courts. Or, you know, like try to commission the EPA or earth justice or some sort of environmental body to conduct a study and then, you know, bring some sort of legislative action. Again, that is going to take a long, long time to create a controlled sound study, and these people want relief now. They feel that their health is deteriorating way faster than any lawsuit could work through the courts.

So mostly they're not really looking for damages. They want an injunction, and they want the noise to stop right now. and it doesn't seem like that is going to happen anytime soon. So what about Marathon, the company that owns the mine right now? Are they trying to do anything to reduce this noise? Yes, Marathon is doing something about it. First want to note that they've flatly denied that the mine is the source of any health problems. So that's the starter for that.

But they do say that they want to be a good neighbor and that they're in the process of taking the fans out. and replacing that cooling system with something called immersion cooling, which involves placing the computers in oil. So they say that at least half of all of the computers are going to be moved into immersion cooling by the end of 2024, and that is going to significantly reduce the sound, they said. And we're just going to see if they keep their word. And Andrew, you've been reporting on crypto and AI. for time. And I'm curious, as these fields grow, do you think we're going to hear more stories

like this one from Bradbury? I do. And I just want to flag that my book Cryptomania, which is the culmination of about three or four years of crypto reporting, comes out in about three weeks. So I'm excited for that. Congratulations. Thank you. The number of data centers, whether from crypto or AI, it's absolutely exploding. They're actually waiting. list in some areas for prospective data centers to get into these places. And there are some local legislators who worry that right now the projected power demands from AI outstrip our current ability to serve them. So they're worried about the constraints on the grid.

Now it's possible that this could go in a few ways, one that the demand is going to decrease or that these industries help bring online new source of energy. But I think it's pretty indisputable that the sheer demand for energy is really increasing. And that is not just, you know, ephemeral energy that is coming from actual places, often, you know, in locales, possibly near people. So I think we're going to see a lot of these showdowns more and more in the coming years, especially if companies place profit over community concerns. Yeah, well said. Andrew, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you so much.

Andrew Chow is a technology correspondent at Time based in Washington, D.C. That's it for today's show. Lots of folks make it happen, including Jason Rosenberg, George Harper, Kathleen Davis, Shoshana Bucksbaum. Coming up on tomorrow's episode, what science can tell us about drinking raw milk. It's different from what some TikTok influencers might say. Please join us. I'm John Dankowski. Thanks for listening.