Science Friday - Coronavirus, Great Lakes Drinking Water. Jan 24, 2020, Part 1

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

A novel coronavirus—the type of virus that causes SARS, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and common cold symptoms—has killed 18 people, and sickened more than 600. In response, Chinese officials have quarantined several huge cities, where some 20 million people live. In this segment, Ira talks with epidemiologists Saskia Popescu and Ian Lipkin about what we know about the virus, how it appears to spread, and whether efforts to contain it are effective—or ethical.  Do you know where your drinking water comes from? For more than 40 million people in the Great Lakes Basin, the answer is the abundant waters of Lake Michigan, Ontario, Erie, Huron, or Superior. This winter, the Science Friday Book Club has been reading Dan Egan’s The Death And Life of the Great Lakes, and unpacking the drastic ecological changes facing these bodies of water in the last century and beyond. But what about the changes to the water that might affect people who drink it? And does everyone who lives on the lakes actually have equal access? Great Lakes Now reporter Gary Wilson unpacks some of the threats to clean drinking water faced by the region’s residents, from Flint’s lead pipes to Lake Erie’s algae blooms to shutoffs for those who can’t afford to pay. And Kristi Pullen Fedinick of the Natural Resources Defense Council explains a recent report that connected disproportionate levels of drinking water contamination to communities that are poorer or dominated by people of color—all over the country. Finally, Science Diction host Johanna Mayer explains the origins of the word “mercury,” another pollutant that has plagued the Great Lakes. This week business leaders, celebrities, and government officials from around the world met in Davos, Switzerland—and one of the topics was trees. The Trillion Tree campaign, a collaboration between several of the world’s largest environmental organizations, wants to combat global deforestation around the world But at the same time, work published in the journal Global Change Biology indicates that tree planting can lead to unintended consequences. The researchers found that increased levels of forest can reduce the available water in nearby rivers dramatically, cutting river flow by as much as 23% after five years and 38% after 25 years. The effect of trees on river flow is smaller in drier years than wetter ones. The type of soil conditions also have an effect—trees planted on healthy grassland have a larger impact on river flow than forests on former degraded agricultural land. David Coomes, Director of the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute and one of the authors of the paper, joins Ira to talk about the pros and cons of reforestation.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A little later in the hour, we'll be talking about the coronavirus that has caused China to shut down a dozen cities. But first, researchers reported this week that they've made progress in helping peripheral nerves regrow. Those are the nerves outside the central nervous system like an arm or a leg. Joining me to talk more about that and other short subjects in science is Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American. I've been following stories like these for years, but this one really seemed special. This one's really interesting. So a lot of nerve regrowth studies try to use stem cells.

This one doesn't. So that could give it an edge at getting FDA approval because it's very straightforward. Essentially, what the researchers did was they took a small tube made of a material sort of like that in dissolving stitches. and they put a protein that encourages nerve growth in it and then implanted it in monkeys and in rodents that had peripheral nerve injuries. And the idea is that this would encourage, if you have a nerve with, say, a small gap in it, you can put this in there and the nerve will regrow itself along the tube and the tube will then dissolve.

And they had really, they had a lot of success. A lot of, in a lot of cases of nerve injury, the person often only regains maybe 50 to 60 percent of their use of that nerve. In this case, the animals got back 80 percent. And they, in the case of the monkeys, these macaques, they were able to pinch food pellets between two fingers instead of having to grasp them in a fist. And they slowly learned how to do that as their nerve healed. And from looking at the research, what was really interesting about it is the gap that they could cover over, was over an inch wide. Yes. Wow. Wow. In a lot of cases, that type of injury might require a transplant. They might have to take a nerve from elsewhere in the body and use it as a patch,

which gives the patient two injuries to then recover from. So if the idea that they could regrow this nerve without requiring that kind of treatment is really exciting. So this is not for spinal cord injuries like that. That's right. The spinal cord is too complex for this type of treatment. This would be more if there was an injury to the nerves. in the hand or the arm or maybe the feet or the legs, it could help restore function in those parts. And there are about 600,000 peripheral nerve injuries per year. So this really has the potential to help. Not to mention the military. Absolutely. It's a big issue there because a lot of body armor might be concentrated over the torso and the head and can leave limbs more vulnerable.

Interesting. Let's change directions from peripheral nerves to our general mental health. There's been concerned about what all this smartphone use might be doing to our brains, especially in teens. And there's some news on that front? Yes, there's some positive news, actually, for once. So there's a lot of people who have pointed out that there are increasing rates of disorders like depression and anxiety, and they have tied that to an increase in screen time. So researchers went and looked at more than 200 studies of screen time and mental disorders, and they found that there's only a very slight connection,

and there's the possibility that it's not a case of cause and effect. It could just be a case of correlation. So it's not necessarily that spending more time on the screen makes a teenager feel more likely to develop depression. It could be that a teenager who is prone to depression might spend more time on their screen. So these studies haven't proven that it's one thing or the other. It's not a cause and effect sort of study.

It's something called a meta, Analysis. A study of studies? A study of studies. And they looked at a lot of studies and there's been a lot of people. This isn't the only study to reexamine the sort of body of evidence amassed so far. And it does look like some of the fears about screen time were overblown and that they don't have the quite the detrimental effect that people worried about. That's good. It's good to hear. There is some news out. Our popular culture seems to be in a state of constant flux, but there's some new research trying to quantify just how far. fast it changes, right? Yes, this was really cool. So basically, they took a lot of pop cultural, I guess, artifacts, you could say. So they looked at pop music during the decades from, I think, the 60s to the present. They looked at more than 2,000 cars that run on fossil fuels and how those cars kind of changed over time.

They also looked at 19th century books and literature in the English language. and they looked at more than 100,000 medical studies. And so they tried to say in each of these cases, what is a feature we can isolate and see how it changes over time, like maybe the size of a certain as part of the car or a topic that comes up a lot, like the topic of the English aristocracy in these novels,

how is the treatment change? Is it paid attention to more or less over time? And what they found is that the evolution of these traits is very gradual. and they compared it actually to the animal evolution. So they looked at some cases of, for example, Darwin's finches and how their beak size changed over time. And the researchers in this paper concluded that you can pop culture and animals evolve at roughly the same rates. Wow, that's interesting.

Finally, there's a study that features this sound. So that is a 3,000, more than 3,000-year-old sound that we're hearing, again, brought back from the dead. It's no longer under wraps. What is it? Oh, I'll get to the point. This is the recreated voice of a mummy, an ancient Egyptian mummy. So researchers scan, they use CT scans to look at the vocal tract of this mummy. And then they 3D printed a replica and they hooked it up to this machine that does, basically, it imitates the vocal cords. So they sent a simulation of an adult male's production of his vocal cords through this replica of the vocal

tract and it went eh eh that sounds like it's backing up what about the other parts you know the mouth the throat and the head wouldn't that you know change the way it actually sounds absolutely so the vocal tract sort of comes goes from the voice box up to the nasal cavity

and the and the mouth and basically what this thing reflects is basically the shape that this vocal tract had when the mummy was at rest So when I talk, I'm constantly moving my vocal track to make these different vowel sounds that are coming out of my mouth. And you can actually, researchers have looked at people doing this in MRI machines and in CT scans. But this is a case of doing it for someone who is much, much, much, much, much older than your average subject. And so it's less a reflection of what the real voice sounded like and more a reflection of the current shape of the vocal tract. Great cool stuff you always bring us, Sophie.

Thank you. Sophie Bushwick Technology Editor at Scientific American. And now it's time to play Good Thing, Bad Thing, because every story has a flip side, and we have one this week. This week, business leaders, celebrities, and government officials from around the world met in Davos. And one of the topics were trees. One of it was, yeah. Remember the Trillion Tree Initiative? It got kicked off this week.

And really, who could be against planting more trees? But research published this week argues that sometimes a new fruit. forest may have unintended consequences. Joining me to talk about this is one of the authors of that study published in the journal Global Change Biology. David Coombs is director of the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute in Cambridge, UK, and he's just back from Davos himself. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you very much indeed. You're welcome. How big an impact does planting a forest have? Well, I'm very much in favor of of protecting the world's intact forest and restoring natural forests

and also planting trees, which was the focus of attention in Davos this week. And we know that already forests are soaking up about 28% of the CO2 we put into the atmosphere each year. And so planting more trees is only going to soak up more and store more carbon. So it's really important to plant and protect forests. So I'm all in favor of that. Well, that's the good news as we talk about and good news, good thing, bad thing. Give us the possible downside to this.

Well, the possible downside in some parts of the world, and it's not everywhere, is that if you plant trees, they're actually much better at taking rainfall, capturing it in the leaves, capturing it in the stems, and capturing in the roots, and sending it straight back into the atmosphere and turning it back into water vapour. And so what you see if you plant trees in grasslands or old croplands is that the river flows go down, And so that's potentially bad news if you live in an arid region and forests are replanted on hills and then you just haven't got as much water going down into the valleys where it could be used by aquaculture or washing or whatever in the cities. So that's the downside. But here in the UK, we're not short of a drop or two of rainfall and planting trees on the hills is thought to be a good thing.

It allows water to be stored on the hills after heavy rain and not go through and. and flood the lowlands. So depending on where you are in the world, this could be regarded as a good or a bad thing. So you have to be, as you say, you have to be conscience of what you're doing and where you are when you do this. Exactly.

So I just think as we're, I mean, it's a tremendous opportunity with everyone, all the politicians seem to be on the side. Donald Trump this week. Planting a trillion trees is something America's into as well as Europe. We've just got to think what trees and where. what's the right thing to do here?

And it does require a bit more thoughts than plonking trees everywhere. You know, the climate change in this country has caused lots of flooding, overflowing of river banks and things. In those cases, could the trees actually soak up a significant amount of water? Well, that's a more complicated one. And certainly, I mean, I think up in the planting trees in the uplands has a very clear effect on river flows down in the lowland areas. I'm not, to be honest, I'm not sure about the lowland vegetation, what the benefits

or otherwise would be. I wouldn't like to sell you something other than what I'm knowledgeable about. Well, we wouldn't like you to do that either. But what I'd like to ask you is if, what kinds of trees did you look at? Are there certain trees that work different than others? Well, like your last guest, this was a meta-analysis, so it's taking lots of previous studies. and actually there's hundreds of studies and we've just focused on 43

really top quality ones where we have what's called a time series. People have followed the forest after it's been planted and follow it over a number of years. And so that's what we've looked at. We've looked at all the studies which are high quality throughout the world, but most of them were in the Mediterranean

sort of climates, a sort of drier climates of the world where people were worried about this very issue. Yeah, and they should be there according to your study. Thank you, Dr. Coombs, for taking time to be with us today. Yes, a pleasure. David Combs, Professor in the Department of Plant Sciences, Director of the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute in jolly old Cambridge.

When we come back, we're going to update on the coronavirus outbreak and how congressional budget cuts may hamper our ability to respond to outbreaks like this one here in the U.S. So stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. If you're joining us via web screen today, I want to say thank you for taking time to come to us on a pretty big day. We're testing out, hoping you're streaming and listening to Science Friday.

A novel coronavirus, you've heard about this. The numbers just keep growing and not on the good side. It has killed at least two dozen or more people, and it is infected almost a thousand people, including we now have at least two confirmed cases in the United States. In China, the disease has now paralyzed a dozen cities with a combined population of of 35 million people. As Chinese officials have grounded planes, they have cut off trains, buses, and ferries, soldiers are reportedly guarding some stations. Tourist sites are shutting down, parts of the Great Wall in Shanghai, Disneyland. And at the disease epicenter in Wuhan, construction crews are furiously building a hospital. They say we'll be ready for additional

patients in just a week. We don't know what that hospital is going to look like. And we'll be steel walls or a big tent, we don't know, but if it's ready in a week, that will be helpful. And from a scientific standpoint, this outbreak is very different from the SARS outbreak 17 years ago. Researchers have been encouraged by how quickly they're getting genetic clues that tell us valuable information about the disease. We talked to one of them yesterday. Trevor Bedford, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Research Center and the University of Washington.

So basically a week after registering that there's this new thing, we via kind of amazing scientists in China, have a genome for this novel virus that have never been seen before. And then after the first genome was released on a Friday afternoon, we had five more on Sunday morning. And now nine days later, we're up to 24, I think it is. And that first genome has been amazing for people developing rapid tests to be able to actually confirm cases. And then these subsequent genomes are being very useful to understand the kind of basic epidemiological question. It's evolutionary biology. Trevor Bedford talking to Science Friday yesterday. And now here to tell us more about the virus and the measures being taken to contain the outbreak are my guests.

Saskia Pockew is a senior infection prevention epidemiologist at Honor Health in Phoenix and an infectious disease writer and researcher. Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Pockech, Sue. Hi. Thanks so much for having me. You're welcome. Ian Lipkin is director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia here in New York and the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology. He also assisted the World Health Organization and the People's Republic of China during the 2003 SARS outbreak. Welcome back, Dr. Lipkin. Thank you.

And we want to hear from you now that least two cases have been identified here in the U.S. Are you concerned about the outbreak expanding? Tell us what's on your mind, our number 844724. or 8255. You can also tweet us at Cy Frye, S-E-I-F-R-I. Let me begin with you, Saskia. What's the latest we know? Take us up to date about the outbreak. Well, in the United States, that it was just confirmed,

we had a secondary case in Chicago was definitely concerning and a rule out case in Texas from what I'm hearing. So the last report the CDC gave was also, there were about 63 people under investigation or under concern, I should say, across I believe, 22 states. 11 have been ruled out by testing, which is good. So I think a lot of this really just comes down to really reinforcing preparedness within the frontline health care and also public health.

And that's kind of what we're working on right now, because I think a lot of people get very concerned when they see airport screening measures. Now five airports are doing that with flights from Wuhan. And I think the biggest thing is reinforcing the knowledge and the skills we already have. good at isolation. We're good at screening, so we just need to kind of hone in on that. Well, so what's the play here if they find somebody, Dr. Lipkin, if they find somebody who might be a candidate or might be ill? How do they know that? And what do they do with them? Well, the signs and symptoms of this infection are no different than influenza or any of a number

of other respiratory viruses. So the travel history, at least now, is key. if someone has been traveling near Wuhan province, at this point, these are the individuals of whom we're concerned. And we know the incubation period is typically two to five days, but it may be as much as 10 to 14. So those people who are returning from these areas who have any sort of symptoms of respiratory illness should report to a health care facility,

and they should be treated as infected, until we clear them. Dr. Pappescu, the World Health Organization has hesitated to declare the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. I mean, if we're worried about spreading around the world, why have they resisted doing this? I think there are a lot of factors. I mean, we're still very early in this outbreak. We're still learning about it. And you don't necessarily want to jump the gun on a decision, but also the question about sustained human-to-human transmission has been really big. As of now, you know, we've seen clusters. So we're not seeing sustained human to human

transmission. It's more in families, health care settings, small groups. And as this outbreak continues, and we're starting to kind of see from the new data that's coming out, the new studies are saying it might be changing. We might start to seeing sustained human to human transmission. If that happens, it will potentially change that declaration. I think a lot of it also comes into that this is not a global emergency yet. The declaration of a public health emergency of international concern is not one to be taken lightly. And when we do that, it really brings in a lot of resources, a lot of efforts, which is wonderful. But we also have to really consider, is this bubbling outside of borders? Is this truly impacting international

health on that level outside of a couple of cases here and there? And Dr. Lipkin, tell us about this coronavirus. I know they come in many flavors. Is this a pretty innocuous one? Is it lethal? Where does this new strain finish? this particular virus is most similar to SARS coronavirus that's it's not identical it's 96% similar to a virus that's been identified in a bat which is a reservoir for many of these emerging coronaviruses its behavior thus far as more similar to the SARS coronavirus that we saw in 2003 and less than the MERS coronavirus I would not call it innocuous. Obviously, there's a lot of disease already associated with it, and as you've heard,

a minimum of 26 deaths. I personally believe that the outbreak is going to be much larger, and I would not be at all surprised if the WHO ranking doesn't change. And this is being reviewed on a regular basis, because, as my colleague has suggested, it does require a lot of resources to change that designation. On the other hand, We need to move very quickly if we're going to contain this virus. Let's go to the phones, our number 844-724-8255. Kendall in Pensacola, Florida. Hi, Kendall.

Hi. Go ahead. I have a, it's a comment and a question. I was traveling around Africa right around the Ebola epidemic, and they were doing the same thing. They had body temperatures in the airport, and I actually came down with malaria when I was in Zambia, and I had to fly back to South Africa.

Africa. So my friends and I put cooling blankets all over me to lower my body temperature right before I went in through the scanner to make sure that my fever was low enough that I could fly. So if I was able to do that during the Ebola epidemic, what's to say that people can't do that now is they do have their illness and they're trying to come back to the United States and they're just cooling their body temperature down to then fly. So, Soskia, do you have a response? Well, first of all, I'm sorry that you were traveling with malaria. That's a really good point.

And part of it is that we know travel screening and airport screening isn't perfect. It's not designed to be a catch-all, especially during respiratory virus season, which we're in. We're in a heavy flu season. But it's just one stopgap we can use, but also an education tactic. That's the way I like to see it. So even if you might be having a fever and you're trying to cool yourself down, hopefully providing you with that information and that education, should you continue to be sick, we'll encourage you to seek care. That's what we saw in Washington, actually. before these airport screening started to occur.

The patient actually knew about, you know, the outbreak and sought medical care, knowing that they probably were exposed at some point. Dr. Lipkin, there was a report out this week. Earlier, there was speculation suggesting this came from a snake, but that was quickly debunked by other scientists hopping on social media, trying to stamp out that speculation. And one of the reasons, the point I bring it up, one of the reasons they could debunk that is because there's already so much genetic

data available about this particular outbreak? Why is that and how helpful is that? So before getting into that, I just want to add one more thing with respect to the airport screening. People can be infected and not yet febrile, and there have been people who become very sick without developing a fever. So, you know, this, as we've said, this is not as useful, perhaps, as identifying yourself as having been to a region where there might have been infection and being, you know, being forthright about the fact that if you develop symptoms, you need to get evaluated. Now, the point of the snake, this was fascinating when this first came out, not so much because

it was wrong, and those of us who knew a lot about these viruses, recognized it as such, but because the community policed it so well, he immediately went back and said, you know, this thing is 96% identical to other viruses that have been identified in bats. And it's highly unlikely that this is something that represented a virus that came out of a snake. Though it made for a very, very good story, and there are lots of interesting figures in that paper, so those of you who want to look at it. But it illustrates the point that today with social media and rapid sequencing, we can learn so much so quickly.

In 2003, the genome of SARS-Coronavirus took a team of people working around the clock for over a week. with modern sequencing methods, we can generate these sort of data in a matter of hours. So it's social media and it's also improvements and technology that allowed us to get handle on this so quickly. So how far away then, and I'll ask both of you, let me start with you, Dr. Popescu. How far away if you know so much about the genetics is a vaccine for this? I am not a virologist, so I applaud those that are working on them. I would imagine a couple of years, to be honest with you.

Dr. Lipkin, you agree? I think it's a much shorter time frame. I mean, to make a, first of all, to make a vaccine against this virus is not going to be that difficult. We know the protein that's likely to be implicated and attaching to cells and getting into them. The challenge is always with the development, the manufacture, and the distribution. because this requires different levels of testing, safety as well as efficacy, and that's what takes time. It wouldn't surprise me if we didn't have a vaccine candidate, you know, in a matter of weeks, but it may take as much as a year to roll it out.

It shouldn't take that long, and we're continually trying to accelerate that process. Let's go to the phones, get a call before we go to more questions. Suzanne and Dolores, Colorado, did I get that right, Suzanne? Yes, you did. Thank you. Hi, go ahead. Hi, in 2017, in Wuhan, China, a biosafety level four lab was opened to study new pathogenic viruses, and SARS was one of them. There's an article in the February 17 issue of Nature journal about this biosafety level four lab in China,

and it expresses concerns about China's ability to contain, excuse me, the pathogens in this lab. Can any of your experts weigh in on this? I'd be happy to take that IRA if you wish. Go ahead. So I've been to Wuhan, and I know the investigators who work in that laboratory, and they are careful investigators, they're first, they're world class, and I'm not concerned about an infraction that would lead to a real-class. least, more likely, in my view, is that there were wild animals in this market in Wuhan,

not snakes, but small mammals and bats that transmitted this virus to people who went into this market, and then it ultimately shifted to a human-to-human transmission. We run into this concern, and I understand it, because it seems like you might be concentrating risk. But in fact, scientists who work in this area are inevitably very, very cautious and very, very concerned. Let me break in because I have to give a station break. I'm Ira Plato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. And I want to go to one last question before I run out of time for Saskia.

You wrote about how the U.S. just cut funding for the type of hospitals that deal with disease outbreaks of this nature. Coronavirus, Ebola, stuff like that. Tell us what's going on here. Well, we after, right about 2015, right after, during, I should say, the Ebola outbreak, there was a tiered hospital approach to dealing with special pathogens. Now, this new coronavirus has not been classified as that, so it is important to say that. But something like Ebola that really requires enhanced health care measures and that we're just not prepared for. So we developed four tiers and that includes frontline hospitals, which are the most, or the majority, I should say, assessment hospitals, treatment centers and regional treatment centers.

And unfortunately, the funding for everything but those regional treatment centers, and there's only about 10, is set to expire. So the concern is that in the face of a new outbreak, it's always a good reminder of how prepared are we, how well are we supporting our preparedness efforts, especially in the front lines and health care. And with this kind of funding set to expire, it's very concerning because it doesn't necessarily encourage hospitals

to maintain that increased level of readiness that we know is expensive. and, you know, if it's not a very common event, there's just not a lot of incentive there. And where did that funding come from? It was through the Health and Human Services, the health care emergency preparedness funding. So they did specially bowl of funding just for this. And so it's going to expire in a few weeks? Yes, I believe in March and April.

It's set to expire. Dr. Lipkin, do you share her concern? I do. funding for research and public health preparedness is down. In some ways, we're a victim of our own success. If we do our jobs well, people ignore us. But emerging infectious diseases are unfortunately here to stay. So it's a marathon, not a sprint.

And so we need a larger, longer range picture of this, then, is what you're saying. Yes, we need sustainable support. Yeah. Dr. Popesky, what would you suggest happen? I would love to really focus not just on the top tier, which will likely to continue funding, but also the frontline hospitals. Because when people get sick, whether it's from an emerging infectious disease or anything else, they're going to go to a health care facility. And unfortunately, there's just not the resources and attention to infectious disease and biopreparedness. So I would love more attention to that and more of that public-private partnership. Unfortunately, it takes a disease outbreak like this one to get that attention, right?

And then it goes away, as you were saying. I want to thank both of you for taking time to be with us today and have a good weekend. Ian Lipkin, Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia here in New York and John Snow Professor of Epidemiology and Saskia Pescu Senior Infection Protection Prevention Epidemiologist at Honor Health in Phoenix and an infectious disease writer and researcher. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about the Great Lakes, our book club subject. The Great Lakes are the largest source. Did you know this? The largest source of surface freshwater on the planet? Right here in your backyard. So what happens when you can't drink it?

Lots of water. You know that old phrase about water and water everywhere and not a drop to drink. We'll talk about it after the break. So stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. We're going to venture now. back to the Great Lakes, where 20% of the surface fresh water on the planet. And in one lake alone, 10% of that water is in Lake Superior alone. And the Science Friday Book Club is reading all about the lakes this month, looking at Dan Egan's book, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. Book Club Zarr, Christy Taylor, is back to take us on a tour of what it's like to depend on the lake for your drinking water. Welcome back, Wisconsinite, Christy. Never going to get past that, am I, Not in the Great Lakes area.

Well, like you said, the Great Lakes have a lot of water in them, quadrillions of gallons. I don't even know how many billions that is of fresh water, which is water you can drink, shower, and cook your food with. Except sometimes you can't. The people of Flint, Michigan are still recovering from a series of choices by their city leaders that led to dangerous levels of lead in their drinking water five years ago. And Lake Erie now regularly has blooms of algae that produce toxins you can't even boil out of your water. And you shouldn't even touch it, much less drink it. That's what happened in the city of Toledo, Ohio in the summer of 2014. A report last year from the Natural Resources Defense Council points out that the undrinkable

drinking water problem is a problem all over the country, but especially if you live in an area with more poor people, people of color, and non-English speakers. And this isn't always in cities. Take this story from listener Christy in Indiana, who submitted this story on the Science Friday Vox Pop app. We live in the country, so we get our water from a well. There have been times when it has not been safe to drink from our well because we periodically get flooded by the Ohio River, which means our well is underwater.

After that happens, we are required to put bleach in the well and then run that bleach out to sanitize the well. So we're going to talk a bit about drinking water in the Great Lakes and Beyond and the challenges to keeping water clean and accessible to everyone. My guests are Gary Wilson, a senior correspondent for Detroit Public Television's Great Lakes Bureau. in Chicago. Hey, Gary. Hey, Christy. How are you? I'm good. And we have Dr. Christie Pullenfednik, Director of Science and Data at the Natural

Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. Welcome, Christy. Hi, thanks so much, Christy. I'm glad that Christy's represented. There are a lot of Christy's on this show today. So, Gary, I might actually start with you. When we talk about water access in the Great Lakes region, I think most people will think first about Flint, Michigan's lead crisis, which started in 2014 and is arguably still continuing. Just this week, the Supreme Court ruled that Flint residents could move forward on suing their local and state leaders. But can you remind us all first how that lead got there in the first place? Sure, Christy.

I think any discussion regarding Flint and the Flint water crisis needs to start with a look back at the financial disinvestment that took place in that city going back decades well before the water crisis. And that was generally led by the decline of the auto industry and related industries that supported auto. So Flint has been in desperate financial straits and was put under the auspices of an emergency manager by the state of Michigan. There's a law that allows that. And the decision was made by that manager to switch the source of Flint's drinking water from Lake Huron via Detroit to the Flint River,

what followed that decision that many think was taken rather cavalierly and was essentially a financial decision. What followed was a cascade of mismanagement, neglect, failed state and federal oversight, and all that led to a city of 100,000 people that's majority African-American to be exposed to lead poisoning via its drinking water and literally surviving on bottled water, as you could see, in the national headlines. Yeah, and just to be clear, the lead in the water in Flint, it didn't come from the river water, but from reactions between the river water and the old pipes that the city was realized. lying on, right? Exactly. And Christy, many, including you have called Flint's crisis, a case of really massive environmental injustice.

What are you talking about when you say this environmental injustice? Yeah, that's a really great question. I mean, getting back to what Gary just said about the financial disinvestment, I mean, we live in a country that has a long history of racial and economic segregation and disenfranchisement. And so there are numerous communities, even to this day, that remain racially and economically separated in communities of color and low-income. communities often suffer from that significant disinvestment from both public and private entities. And so, you know, even though the data that we have for the Safe Drinking Water Act don't necessarily tell us all of the explicit reasons, you know, if you live in a place where your

infrastructure is not being updated quickly, you're going to suffer when that infrastructure breaks down. And the NRDC that you work for, you have data finding that this connection between marginalization and poor water quality is really happening all over the country. What's the scale of that? How many people are we talking about? Yeah, that's right. I mean, so we analyzed, you know, data from the Safe Drinking Water Act, which is the federal law that's meant to protect our water in this country.

And we found that almost 130 million people or nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population received their drinking water from a system that violated that Safe Drinking Water Act between June of 2016 and May of 2019. And of those 130 million, about 44 million received their water from systems that violated the health-based standard. And so, you know, it's really a big problem in terms of that. of the types and the scope of the contamination that we're seeing across the country. And you mentioned health problems. And I think when we talk about water contamination, there is this implicit understanding that health is involved. But can you really unpack what the stakes are when we're talking about contaminated drinking water? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we really think about the issues that can arise in our health

at, you know, the very short-term things that can happen. So you can have gastrointestinal distress, for example. And so there's some pathogens that can be in the water. that if you're, you know, a healthy, active person will just kind of, you know, give you an upset stomach and some gastrointestinal symptoms. But if you're immunocompromised or elderly or young, these pathogens can actually lead to death very acutely. So we think a lot about those types of impacts. We think about cancer. So, you know, typically this is over a lifetime, but there are multiple carcinogens that are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act and others that aren't quite regulated. But we still think about those. We think about, you know, things that can.

can impact our fertility. We think about things that can impact our brain development, like lead. So there are really just a lot of different health impacts that we think about and really want to try to understand when communities and individuals are being exposed to contaminated water. Gary, I think a lot of people would look at a body of water like, say, Lake Michigan or like Huron, when we're talking again, quadrillions of gallons of water total. And, you know, we say this water, it's clear, it's beautiful, it's massive. I have no reason not to take it for granted. How would you qualify that, especially in the Great Lakes region? but maybe also for water on a whole. Well, the region has a bit of a history of, and I don't think it's just the region, but taking the water for granted. You know, these big, beautiful lakes, and we think, well, I go, I turn the tap on,

the water tastes good. You know, it can't happen here. There's a little bit of that mentality. But I think, you know, based on what happened in Flint and also in Toledo with the Toledo water crisis, you know, that was a wake-up lot of people. Those communities, the Toledo Water Crisis, people woke up 400,000 people on a Saturday morning, and they couldn't drink the water from the tap, and there was no notice. There were bottled water was sold out, you know, in a nanosecond, so to speak.

So all of a sudden, people are starting to think, wait a second, what's going on? Do I need to, what do I need to do here? Do I need to pay more attention to my local water supplier? And one of the reporters in Toledo has told me that years after the Toledo water crisis, there are people there who still refuse to drink water from the tap. They will only drink bottled water. So what's happening is bad, but it's getting people's attention. Sure.

Well, and was there, you know, Christy has talked about environmental injustice in the case of Flint. Is there a justice component to the algae in Lake Erie and Toledo's crisis or cities along? along Lake Erie? Well, it's less visible because the algae affected, you know, 400,000, 500,000 if you actually get out of greater Toledo. Some villages in Michigan were actually impacted because they get their water from Lake Erie. But when you're sprinting to the store to buy bottled water to cook and to bathe and do all kinds of things, bottled water is expensive. So people who are disadvantaged financially are going to be, you know, less likely to afford it, be at higher risk.

Krista, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I was going to say even outside of the algebra wounds, which, again, it's a bit hard to see at this point. But, you know, when we did look at the national data, we found that race really had the strongest relationship to slow an effective enforcement of that federal drinking water law across all communities. And we found that, you know, communities that had higher portions of their population that people of color had higher rates of violations. We found that systems that were in chronic

violation of the law, so those that were, had violations every single time frame we looked at within the three-year period that we studied, you know, they were 40 percent more likely to be in communities with higher proportions of their populations that were communities of color. And so really, you know, when we're thinking about these injustices, both locally, regionally and nationally, you know, there are factors that we see that are related that even if we don't see it on the surface, it could be there a little bit under there. So what does the law say about all this? It seems if there are this many violations or if they're lingering in this way,

that there would be some kind of consequence for people who are, or for entities that are responsible for these kinds of problems. Yeah, I mean, there are enforcement actions. Oftentimes, you know, there are two different categories. We can have informal and formal actions. But even those formal enforcement actions, which could involve penalties, they often don't. And we found that even in communities, again,

communities that had larger proportions of the population, that were people of color, that even when those formal enforcement actions were taken, the system still remained in violation. So it's either saying that those enforcement actions aren't enough to actually compel the system to get into compliance, or there's some underlying reason that these communities continue to suffer these really long-range and long-term effects. Christy, I would just, if I could add to that, Michigan is in the process. it'll take forever to fix the National Safe Drinking Water Act likely.

Michigan a couple of years ago started the process of updating their Safe Drinking Water Act focused on lead and they're in the final stages of implementing it. And in general, the Michigan governor now, Gretchen Whitmer, has made a tremendous effort to include environmental justice issues in their principles. planning for safe drinking water. All right. So we should not take for granted that our water is clean, but are there any practical steps that people can take if they're not sure what's going on with their water or want to make sure that the bodies of water near them are as good as they can be for providing for them? Christy. Yeah, I mean, I would say that the first thing to do is to know where

your water's coming from. So, you know, when you turn on that tap, if you're not served by your own private well and knowing who your water system is and, you know, trying to keep track of, you know, what the drinking water issues might be. So a lot of water utilities have Twitter feeds and other types of ways that they communicate with consumers. So, you know, trying to stay as informed as possible. But, you know, ultimately this really is about the water systems doing the job that they're supposed to do for, you know, the public protection. And there's been such an erosion of trust. And Gary mentioned in this earlier from communities in, you know, Flint and Newark and other places that People just don't trust that their water is safe.

And so I think that the water systems need to be going out and engaging more with the public, helping them understand the process, helping them understand the types of testing and cleaning that they're doing and the limitations to that because, you know, it really isn't about solving the problem, one bottle of water at a time. It's really about ensuring that entire communities have access to clean water when they turn on that tap. Gotcha. And Gary, in like 30 seconds, what stories are you looking at for water coming forward? Well, I'm tracking very closely the issue about the human right to water.

Chicago Mary Laura Wright for it in her first day in office back in May ended water shutoffs and is implementing a water affordability plan. I'm checking to see if other cities like Detroit follow suit. Great. Well, thank you so much both of you. That's all the time we have. Gary Wilson, senior correspondent at the Great Lakes Bureau for Detroit Public Television and Dr. Christie Pullen-Fednik, Director of Science and Data for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

And just reminding you, I'm Christy Taylor, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Speaking of polluted waters, one thing that we know is in the Great Lakes and other bodies of water is Mercury, a toxic silver metal that's famous for being liquid at room temperature. While Mercury is no longer the Great Lakes pollution problem it was decades ago, it is still in some fish. And there are some signs that it may be getting worse again thanks to climate change. And with a name like Mercury, also a planet and a Roman god, you know there is a good story in store. to tell it is our resident word nerd science diction producer Johanna Mayer. Hey, Johanna. Hey, Christy. So, cut to the chase. Where does the word mercury come from? So it actually all starts

with alchemists. Mercury is, yeah, Mercury is one of the oldest elements. We've known about it since antiquity. And it played this really central role in alchemy kind of across the globe. And so these alchemists tended to kind of colloquially refer to it as Quicksilver, which maybe you've heard before. And then when the name was eventually formalized in Mercury, it had this twofold meaning. The first was that Roman god that you mentioned, Mercury, who was known for being particularly quick and agile. And then also the planet Mercury just happens to be the fastest moving planet in our solar system. All right. Okay. But why, so when you look at the periodic table, it is HG. Neither of those letters is in the word mercury. What's going on? I know. It always seems so

unparring chemistry class. But it actually makes more sense than you would think. because it's a nod to the element's old name, Hydrargeron, which means water is silver. So that's where the HG comes from. All right. So Mercury, it is wet, fast, and silvery. We got these things going on. There's also this long history here of it being used in not great medical ways. Yes.

So for a really long time, people were not totally sure what the deal was with Mercury, how it worked, how it didn't work. And for hundreds of years, Mercury was basically used as the go-to medical cure for a pretty much anything that was ailing you. Like, you were experiencing constipation. Pop a mercury pill. All right. The stomach was upset. Pop a mercury pill. Did you come down with yellow fever? Try popping a mercury pill. It was the catch-all cure. And the reason behind that was because when you took one of these mercury pills, it purged you. It induced rather swift bowel and stomach movements and kind of just flushed everything out, which, you know, sounds super unappealing, was probably very uncomfortable, but the reasoning behind that was left over from the idea of humoral theory,

from the ancient Greek and Roman idea that there were these four fluids that should be in balance in your body. And so the idea was maybe you're feeling sick, one fluid, you have too much of it, there's too little of another fluid, pop a mercury pill, purge it all out. All right, so like a 19th century goop we've got that. All right. Yes, that was, don't do that. All right.

So, let's be clear. Please don't take mercury pills. What is next for science diction? We have a really fun project coming down the pike. We're turning science diction into a podcast. So each episode is going to look at the origin story behind one specific word or phrase. There'll be a short, fun little dose of nerdery in your week. And so make sure that you're subscribed to the Science Friday podcast because that's where those episodes will drop.

And in the meantime, you can stay up to speed by signing up for a newsletter at sciencefriiday.com slash science diction. All right. Cool. Thank you so much, Johanna Mayor, host of the upcoming. You heard it here.

Science Diction Podcast. Thank you. Thank you. Christy Taylor, producer of the Science Friday Book Club this month's pick is Dan Egan's The Death and Life

of the Great Lakes. Learn more about how to participate at ScienceFriety.com slash book club. And before we go, if you live near Portland, Oregon, check out

our next edition of science goes to the movies. On Thursday, February 5th, we're screening contact. Oh, I love that classic 1997 sci-fi film. And then we're going to speak with experts about searching for other world life in 2020.

Tickets are going fast. So visit ScienceFriety.com slash contact movie to learn more at ScienceFriety.com slash contact movie. And on our Science Friday Voxpop app, our degrees of change. We're looking at how climate change is affecting Native American communities. If you're a tribal member, you want to hear what adaptations you and your community are making. You can also email us at SciFri at ScienceFriad.com. Plyto in New York.