Science Friday - Finding Lead Pipes Through Algorithm, How Soil Could Save The Planet. Jan 22, 2021, Part 1

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

After Flint’s Crisis, An Algorithm Helps Citizens Find Lead Pipes It’s been nearly seven years since the beginning of Flint, Michigan’s water crisis, when high levels of lead from corroded lead pipes led to water shortages and health issues for city residents. Since then, many other cities around the country have had their own problems with lead. Researchers estimate that millions of Americans are living with pipes that need to be replaced. As Wired reported earlier this month, Toledo, Ohio is one of the latest cities trying to get ahead of its legacy of lead plumbing, with the help of an algorithm created by University of Michigan researchers. The model was originally created to help the city of Flint more quickly—and less expensively—target which homes were most likely to need their pipes replaced. The same researchers are now working as a private company, called BlueConduit, to help other cities do the same work. And in Toledo, they’re working in close partnership with the city and community organizations. Ira talks with University of Michigan professor and BlueConduit co-founder Eric Schwartz, and Alexis Smith of the nonprofit Freshwater Future, about the work ahead for Toledo, and why deploying an algorithm effectively depends on community trust and input. Curious if your own water pipes contain lead? EPA-funded project Crowd The Tap has a free tutorial for finding your water service line—and determining the materials of your pipes. The organization’s mission is to ensure safe drinking water in the United States. By sharing what you observe, you can help identify areas for tap water testing and infrastructure replacement. Learn about your pipes, and how you can help at CrowdTheTap.org. Former Michigan Governor, Other Officials Charged for Flint Water Crisis In Flint, criminal and civil cases stemming from the city’s lead tainted drinking water crisis are converging this week. New criminal charges may be coming while many in Flint still question whether they will ever get justice. Nearly seven years ago, government leaders here pushed the button that switched the city of Flint’s drinking water source from Detroit’s water system to the Flint River. The intent was to save money. The result was a complete disaster. Improperly treated river water damaged pipes, which then released lead and other contaminates into the city’s drinking water. Eighteen months later the water was switched back, but the damage was done. Blood lead levels soared in young children. People were forced to use bottled water for drinking and washing clothes. The city was forced to rip out thousands of old pipes. While testifying about the Flint water crisis before Congress in 2016, former Governor Rick Snyder acknowledged the mistakes. “Local, state and federal officials, we all failed the families of Flint,” Snyder told a congressional committee. Snyder was not among the 15 state and local government officials who faced criminal charges for their handling of the crisis. Half of them pled guilty to lesser charges in exchange for no jail time. And in 2019, Michigan’s new Attorney General dropped charges against the remaining defendants citing problems with the original investigation. The investigation seemed over. Until Tuesday, when the Associated Press reported that several former government officials, including former Governor Snyder, would be facing new charges. If that happens, legal experts say it would be a difficult case for prosecutors. Read more at sciencefriday.com. How Soil Could Save The Planet There’s a scene in the 2014 film Interstellar that imagines the hypothetical impact of climate change on Earth’s food system. The film takes place in a dystopian future where a global crop blight is slowly rendering the planet uninhabitable. Corn is the last viable crop and dust storms threaten humanity’s survival. But it’s not just science fiction. Scientists are warning that if we don’t adopt more sustainable farming practices we’ll deplete the soil of vital nutrients and actually accelerate climate change. The Earth’s soils contain about 2,500 gigatons of carbon—that’s more than three times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and four times the amount stored in all living plants and animals. And the soil—in union with the plants that grow on and in it—may have an unlimited capacity to suck CO2 out of the air and store it underground. Tom Newmark, founder of The Carbon Underground, joins Ira to discuss the potential of carbon sequestration through a farming technique called “regenerative agriculture.” And Diana Wall, professor of biology at Colorado State University, discusses the role microbes play in the carbon cycle. President Biden Makes Immediate Changes To U.S. Science Policy This week’s peaceful transition of power from one administration to another was a win for democracy, but it was also a win for science. Among his first acts in the Oval Office, President Biden signed executive orders allowing the U.S. to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, and put the brakes on plans for the Keystone XL pipeline and drilling in the arctic national wildlife refuge. And there will be more policy changes to come, as the president considers signing a new set of orders designed to ramp up U.S. COVID vaccination efforts in the coming days and weeks. Umair Irfan, staff reporter for Vox, discusses the major science policy news of the week. Plus, an update on new variants of SARS-CoV-2 and what scientists have discovered about coronavirus immunity. 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. This week was a win for democracy and also a win for science. On Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci resurfaced with authority. Dominating a White House news conference, he spoke about returning to decision-making based on evidence-backed science and set out an expanded science-driven battle against COVID-19. Well, Mayor Irfan, staff writer for Vox, is here to discuss the reinvigorated science direction, as well as other science news headlines of the week. Hi, Umair. Hi, Ira. I want to start with a piece of what Dr. Fauci said yesterday.

I mean, obviously, I don't want to be going back, you know, over history, but it was very clear that there were things that were said, be it regarding things like hydroxychloroquine and other things like that, that really was uncomfortable because they were not based on scientific fact. I can tell you, I take no pleasure at all. in being in a situation of contradicting the president. So it was really something that you didn't feel that you could actually say something

and there wouldn't be any repercussions about it. The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence, what the science is, and know that's it. Let the science speak. It is somewhat of a liberating feel. Omeyer, liberating to Dr. Fauci,

certainly refreshing to the science community now. Yeah, he certainly seemed like he was in a great mood. but also he was a lot more blunt and a bit more frank than we've heard him talking before, you know, a little bit more about how we are likely to continue seeing a rise in new cases and fatalities as vaccines roll out, as well as some of the uncertainties that we're dealing with, particularly around things like the new variants of the coronavirus that are circulating. Fauci also talked about greatly expanding the weak and confusing vaccination rollout. We certainly are not starting from scratch because there is activity going on in

the distribution. But if you look at the plan that the president has put forth about the things that he is going to do, namely get community vaccine centers up, get pharmacies more involved, where appropriate, get the Defense Production Act involved, not only perhaps with getting more vaccine, but even the things you need to get a good vaccine program. So it's taking what's gone on, but amplifying it in a big way. Umair, I picked out of that that Fauci seemed to be careful about not totally dismissing the efforts of the federal government so far, but building on top of them. Well, that's one of the big changes we're seeing between the Trump administration and the Biden administration. You know, the Trump administration was much more hands off and really did not

see a big role for central planning and management from the federal government. And from the outset, President Biden has been talking about a much larger federal role with the government getting involved. as Dr. Fauci said, in things like production of supplies and also distribution and setting up these centers using government, federal government authorities to actually do the delivery of these things like vaccines. Let's move on a little bit to digging into this week's COVID news. Some concerning updates about those new COVID variants. Tell us about that. Right. We've seen now several different variants emerge around the world, and it turns out several of them have very similar mutations in them. And this is an example.

of convergent evolution. And it seems like these mutations are related to a phenomenon that help the virus actually spread a little bit more readily. This means it's a little bit more transmissible. The virus itself is not becoming more dangerous. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to make individual sicker, but because it can spread more readily, it can cause more stress on health systems. But one variant in particular started standing out a bit more, and this is the one that was found in South Africa. This variant also has mutations that make it. more readily able to elude prior immunity. Scientists were testing plasma they collected from people who survived prior COVID-19 infections

and tested it against this new strain, and they found that it didn't really offer that good protection. And also some of the researchers that are developing treatments, particularly monoclonal antibodies, these therapies are very targeted to very specific parts of the virus. And if those specific parts change, then those therapies are less effective. And one of the therapy manufacturers, Regeneron said that one of the, one of the the two antibodies in its cocktail no longer recognizes this new strain. The other one still does, which means the treatment will likely still work, but it shows how immunity and protection can

start to wane against these newer variations. So they might have to tweak their formulations. Right. You know, we're expecting to see, you know, a certain level of change in mutation and viruses over a period of time. And scientists said that, you know, this is something we saw coming. But these variants now show us a path towards how that might happen. And some, scientists are suggesting that the vaccines, you know, even though they are still effective, as far as we know against the new variants, over time, we may need to start thinking about how we could, you know, reprogram them to start tackling the more current variations of the virus that are circulating. And some have suggested that might happen as soon as this fall.

And on the plus side is that immunity seems to last several months? Right. We had some new research announced this week that showed that at least several months of protection lasts from prior infections to this virus. There was a study in the United Kingdom that looked at about 20,000 different health workers, and they found that the level of reinfection among people who were already infected was much, much lower than the people who never had the disease to begin with. Basically, having a COVID-19 infection reduces the risk of reinfection between 83% and 99%, which is good news for our path towards herd immunity, but as mentioned, you know, those gains are fragile when we have new variants that are circulating that,

could potentially elude that prior immunity. Can we get enough people vaccinated before we get a variant of the virus that's completely resistant to the vaccine? Right. That's one of the things that's adding a lot of urgency to the vaccination campaign. Yes, we do expect that these viruses will continue to mutate. And one of the best bets we have against mutations is to reduce the transmission and spread of the virus, not just with vaccination, but with all the conventional techniques we've been using, you know, things like social distancing and wearing masks.

researchers say that the best way to prevent mutation is to deny the virus opportunities to infect people and develop those mutations. So the fewer people that are infected, the lower the rate of mutation. So that is our best insurance is to basically be as aggressive as possible about controlling the spread of the virus, vaccinating as fast as we possibly can. In addition to what Dr. Fauci said yesterday, the Biden administration is signaling that it will be science advised and earth-oriented among his first acts as president. President Biden signed executive orders, allowing the U.S. to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Health Organization, and put the brakes on plants for the Keystone XL pipeline, and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Yeah, they had a really busy slate this week among the executive orders.

A whole-scale review of climate regulations throughout the government. You know, the President Trump's administration rolled back more than 100 different environmental regulations, and Biden basically said, look at all those regulations and start enhancing them whenever you can in order to make greater gains against fighting climate change across government. He also elevated a scientist to a cabinet-level position. That seems amazing. Right. This means that science will be, you know, more central in the decision-making throughout the government.

You know, this will be somebody who's going to be attending cabinet meetings and also informing the president. The pick for this role is Eric Lander, who is a geneticist who worked on the human genome project, and he is well renowned for working with very large-scale project, which means that, you know, he might be very suited towards working in government where you have to deal with these large administrative issues. But it's a sign that, you know, the Biden administration wants to have this kind of information informing some of the decisions that it's making throughout government, you know, not just as it relates to science, but as it relates to policy, you know, domestic and abroad.

I guess he could have picked a climate scientist for that position. That's right. But it's not as though climate change and climate change. science are not being incorporated throughout the government. I mean, it seems the Biden administration is trying to include climate change and just about everything it's doing. Not only did he bring back a lot of members of President Obama's climate team, but he's also brought in personnel that have a history of working on climate change and social justice issues as they relate to the environment. And that means that, you know, this is something that's going to be omnipresent in a lot of the

decision making throughout this administration. Let's talk about how federal courts throughout one of former President Trump's biggest climate change rollbacks. Tell us about that. Right. See, the EPA is actually required under the Clean Air Act to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and that decision was reached roughly at the beginning of the Obama administration. And so President Obama put forward this rule called the Clean Power Plan that would have drastically ramped down the greenhouse gas emissions produced by power plants. The Trump administration in its effort to undo everything Obama did basically threw that rule out. But because they're required by law to regulate greenhouse gases, they had to come up with a replacement. And the

replacement was really tepid. And not just tepid. Analysis showed that this was actually a rule that would lead to more air pollution and more climate pollution than doing nothing because the way it worked was that encouraged fossil fuel power plants to be more energy efficient with the fuel that they used, which would have the effect of actually making burning fossil fuels more cost-effective. Now, a federal court looked at the Trump administration's rule and basically ruled this week that they did not fully read the law correctly and that they should have used the whole suite of tactics that are available to them, not just increasing energy efficiency, but things like carbon trading and also using things like clean energy and renewable energy to help reduce greenhouse

gas emissions. And now that leaves President Biden pretty much a blank slate going forward. I want to end with a story that's not so politically oriented, but is kind of cool in a Science Friday way. And I'm talking about some cool creature science this week involving the genome of the Australian lungfish. Why is that so important? Well, this turns out to be the largest genome of any animal that we know to exist. This is 43 billion base pairs, 14 times larger than the human genome. And you know, a genome contains all the information that an organism needs to make copies of itself. But it's just stunning to see such a vast library, such a vast archive of this information inside an organism. Now, very clearly, the size of a genome doesn't really correlate

to the complexity of an organism, but it does kind of illustrate just how this organism fits in with our understanding of evolution. I mean, we're looking at this genome scientists, we're able to figure out that these lungfish, these are fish that breathe air rather than, you know, taking oxygen from the water through gills. They are actually more related to four-legged land animals than they are to certain kinds of finned fish. That's amazing. You say the genome doesn't reflect the complexity of the organism. You would think that if you had 43 million base pairs, you'd have a very complex organism. 43 billion base pairs.

43. Thank you. That's another thousand times. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing is that, you know, genomes have a large section of non-coding regions. You know, this is something in the old and day scientists used to call junk DNA. But more recently, they've been talking about this as non-coding regions. Basically, just because it doesn't code for proteins or have specific instructions doesn't mean it doesn't play an important role in regulating the functions of the organism. Now, having these large sections of the genome might be just an artifact of just how old this species is. You know, we have in the fossil record lungfish going back 400 million years. And for the most part, they look very similar to those ancient ancestors.

And in that time period, it might be that they just accumulated a lot of excess information in their genome that just kept accumulating over time from things like viral infections and mutations. So that just might be an artifact of the fact that we're looking at just a very old ancient. species. And speaking of old and ancient, I'm going to thank you very much for taking time to be with us today. My pleasure, Ed. Umer Irfan, staff writer for Vox. We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, how the Flint Water Crisis has spilled over into Toledo, Ohio, the hopeful news after the break. This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. Time to check in on the state of science. This is KER News for W. W.W.S. Public Radio News.

Local science stories of national significance. It's been about seven years since the Flint, Michigan water crisis began. At 2014, the city changed its water source from Detroit's water system to the nearby Flint River in an effort to save money. But officials didn't treat the water properly. So lead from the aging pipes leached into the water, exposing over 100,000 residents to high levels of the neurotoxin. Over the past few years, charges have been filed against some officials.

Some pled no contest, and then in 2019, the remaining charges were dropped. Then just last week, nine officials, including former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, were charged for their roles in the crisis. So what does this mean for getting justice to impacted residents? Joining me today as someone who has followed this crisis closely from the beginning. Steve Carmody, Flint reporter for Michigan, radio based in Flint. Welcome, Steve, to Science Friday. Thank you. As I said, we're almost seven years out from the start of this crisis. Were these charges against the former governor

and those other officials a surprise? The timing was definitely a surprise. Ever since the Attorney General ended an original investigation and started a new one, her office has been very quiet about what's actually been happening with the investigation. So when we learned last week that these charges had been filed, that was a surprise. Most of the people who are facing charges, though, had been charged previously in the original investigation. They're facing additional charges beyond what they were charged with before. And the big surprise was that the former governor was also being charged, although he's only being charged with two counts of neglect of duty, which is a misdemeanor.

How are these officials implicated in the Flint water crisis? Well, for the most part, the people who have been charged in this are state officials. And it's important to remember that in 2014, the city of Flint was under state oversight. The governor had appointed an emergency manager to run the city to correct a financial problem the city was having. So the decision to switch the city's water was made by those emergency managers. And two emergency managers are among those who've been charged in connection with the water crisis. And several state health officials, former state health officials have also been charged with various things, including involuntary manslaughter,

charges that are connected to a Legionaire's disease outbreak that took place at the same time as the water crisis. So it's the state's oversight of the Flint water crisis, which is highlighted by the charges that have been filed. Let's talk about the residents of Flint for a moment who were affected by this crisis. What are they saying about these charges? Since the very beginning, people in Flint have wanted state officials to be held accountable for causing the water crisis in their community. And at the top of their list was Governor Rick Snyder. So when they learned that the governor was going to be criminally charged in connection with the crisis. There was a lot of excitement, a lot of finally that you were hearing around town. But Flint residents like Claire

McClinton said, you know, they were disappointed when they heard what the charges are actually going to be. You know, for a minute, we felt good because that's one of the things we've been wanting on the criminal side of the case. But we also see it in interviews. We hope it's a charge that reflects the damage that was done. And it wasn't. We've been through too much to say we accepted. You know, as I said before, we're almost seven years out from the start of this crisis.

What do we know about how the health of these residents have been impacted over these last seven years and going forward? At this point, it's still being studied. We don't know all the effects that people have had from the high lead exposure and also the exposure to other contaminants, including possibly Legionnaires disease, there's been a lot of focus of studying the effects on young children, children who were six years old and younger, since they are the ones who will be most likely to be affected by a heavy exposure to lead. And those children

are just now, the youngest of those, are just now reaching the first grade and kindergarten. So we're only just now beginning to get a better sense of how their cognitive abilities have been affected by the exposure to the lead. Is there any way to repay folks affected for their troubles? Has there been financial restitution for the people impacted? While we've talked a little bit about the criminal cases, at the same time, there have been a lot of civil lawsuits that have been filed. And this week, a federal judge has given preliminary approval to a $641 million master settlement for many of those lawsuits against the state of Michigan, the city of Flint, and some private businesses as well. but there are still more litigation out there that isn't covered by this master settlement agreement. So while the criminal charges may be just getting restarted, we are actually a little further down the line when it comes to what's going to be happening on the civil side and people seeking damages for what's happened to their health and what's happened to their property.

Steve, thank you for keeping us up to date. You're welcome. Steve Carmody, Flint Reporter for Michigan Radio based in Flint. We've been hearing about the water crisis in Flint, but Flint isn't the only city in the nation. with lead pipes. Millions of Americans are estimated to be exposed to lead tainted water, and there is no safe level of exposure, according to the CDC and the EPA. But cities have been slow to replace pipes. It is an expensive process that also relies on having accurate data about which homes need it. I mean, you don't want to dig a thousand dollar hole in a home that

already has safe copper pipes, right? Well, enter machine learning, an idea that a team, of researchers at the University of Michigan first had when looking at the task ahead in Flint. It offered a solution, an algorithm that could take what cities do know about each home and calculate the probability of lead pipes for each. The result, a ranked list of where to start digging to have the most immediate benefit. And now they're offering the same algorithm to other cities around the country like Toledo, Ohio. Speaking of which, Alexis Smith, is an associate at Freshwater Future, a nonprofit that works with communities around the Great Lakes region on access to clean water. She joins us from Toledo. Welcome, Alexis.

Thank you. Hi. Pleasure to be here. Nice to have you. Dr. Eric Schwartz is a professor in the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and member of the team behind the algorithm and a co-founder of the company Blue Conduit. Welcome, Eric. Hi, Ira. Thanks for having me. You're quite welcome. Alexis, the country is full of aging infrastructure, including those aging pipes. What's the scope of the problem in Toledo, specifically? Sure, yeah.

So I'll tell you that there are 130,000 lead service line connections still in Toledo, and that's according to the city of Toledo's estimate, which can be found on their website. 30,000 of those are city-owned. And so from that, there's probably 25% of what's left. that are privately owned and therefore impacting families. And now in 2021, your organization, Freshwater Future, is partnering with Eric's company, and Toledo was working on getting those pipes out. How much progress has the city made so far?

Well, I'll say that they focused majority of their resources right now on the city side while offering loan installments and things like that to residents who want to change the private side. However, the issue with just offering loans and not being a little bit more proactive and aggressive with our approach is that the areas where these lines are most concentrated are in areas where families are already despaired by other things, our low-income neighborhoods. You know, they're going to have issues repaying that loan. And these repairs can be anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 replacement. It's almost as if they're backed up until a corner where they have these led service lines, but there's not much support in replacing them.

Eric, so you come up with this algorithm, which really you put the data in, it makes decisions about where to look, where not to look. How successful is the algorithm when you apply it? Well, in practice, what we're doing is really we're providing a characterization of the uncertainty to the ultimate decision makers who are the communities and water utilities themselves. By providing those lists, we're saying, as you mentioned, a rank ordering from the homes that are most likely to have lead all the way down to the least likely, perhaps even the block or by neighborhood. However, the groups on the ground actually going and doing this work are going to be organized so that when they go, they're going to get as much lead as possible, given that they are going to spend that money and send crews and close down the streets and get permits. And so success, in that regard, we really measured by what we'll call a hit rate. So for every hundred times that those shovels or equipment is going in the ground, how many of those actually are finding lead? And so in Flint, we were running around 80% of all attempts. We're finding lead. In other cities, now we've seen that can be even higher. Alexis, you're living in one of the communities most affected by the lead in the city. Does that

percentage sort of meet and match what you know about the homes? I would say it does, especially since this is a historical community that has not had any really updated infrastructure in quite some time or any sort of investment. For example, the house that I live in right now has been in my family for generations. you know, this house itself outside of the work that we've done ourselves has probably had little infrastructure updates. And so if I can say that, I can pretty much guarantee that for my neighbors who've been here for very long time. And so the short answer is yes, it is likely that we have a very concentrated lead service line population in this area. And how do your neighbors feel? Are they happy that they have to wait for the inspections and replacements,

knowing that at least they'll be coming, or are they frustrated by the way? You know, on top of everything that we're seeing and experiencing with this pandemic, I think the initial response is frustration. But as we have these conversations, we talk about how this is not something that we're just planning to have done to us. We're doing this together, and we want the community to be a part of every step of that process to make sure that the historical information that is needed to make this as accurate as possible is there. This is going to take them being involved to really be ultimately successful. And so going through and having those conversations definitely provides relief. But of course,

the initial response is frustration because these families are not just dealing with water issues. We're dealing with, you know, living in a food desert. We're dealing with the vacancies. We're dealing with having poorly lit streets and not having enough attention and investment being poured into our neighborhoods. And so there's understandably more frustration, but relief in knowing that not only is there a solution, but there's a citizen-driven partnership-supported solution. Eric, how important from the science side is community participation? Why can't you just roll into town, hand over a list of likely lead pipes, and be done with it? One way that combining the data science and machine learning and statistics with community perspective is

we want to make sure that we are addressing priorities. So what Alexis was just talking about and something that we've talked to Freshwater Future and Toledo about is not just providing a list where they should go to dig and replace the pipes, but also based on the predicted likelihood of lead service lines, where should they really concentrate certain kinds of public communication efforts and really just the efficiency to make sure these are going to be really limited funds. Everyone wants to get their lead pipes for place. They also want to know if they even have lead pipes, but the next month, the next three months, the next year,

not everyone is going to be able to get all of that taken care of in every city. And so the question is, how do you do this and allocate resources equitably? Not in a very top-down algorithmic way. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. There was a news item that may have snuck past a lot of people late last year, and that was that the EPA has updated its lead and copper rule for the first time since 1991 and added some new requirements for cities to understand and act on their lead pipes. Will this change, Eric, make a meaningful difference in people's lives?

The new lead and copper rule has not gone as far as a lot of advocates and us included would have liked. One change that I would like to highlight that is a positive. is there is now a enforceable requirement that has every water system above a certain size making public the materials of service lines for every address, even if it means saying for these 10,000 addresses, we don't know. In fact, there's a requirement that you have to announce to those residents that you don't know the material of their service line or that you do know it and it is led and needs to be replaced. And so what that's doing is creating just the right amount of pressure for communities to ask the question and for utilities to have to answer

and say, well, here's our best answer and here's the investment we're going to make to go out and prioritize which homes, not just to our place, but also where to look. And that's something that we are really excited about taking these best practices and statistics to communities, best practices in this community engagement from Flint or Toledo to other places, because it allows us to really better characterize all this uncertainty for the utility to better make their decisions and better communicate with their constituents and customers. Alexis, one last question for you, because I know when you have old cities, old pipes, old water problems, the water problems just don't end with lead, do they?

There are a lot of other things going on. Well, one thing I will say is that back in 2014, Toledo has. its own water crisis. When we had toxic algal blooms that made our water undrinkable, untouchable, really, we were without water for three days here in Toledo. The distrust is there and it exists. There are still people going out buying bottled water. There are still people who don't trust drinking the water even against all the city's reassurance. And so when we talk about those toxins and we talk about the contamination, we're also getting into another issue. And really, that's going to be the overarching challenge for not just the Great Lakes states to face,

but the entire country, water affordability. As these contaminants come into our systems and it becomes more expensive and more complex to filter out these contaminants, the bill for reckoning with that increases. We had a multi-million dollar system installed to filter out these algal booms. And how are we paying for that? Well, we're raising water rates. for residents. Shutoffs are going to be an issue. When we lead to shutoffs, we lead to a whole other public health issue, especially in the middle of a pandemic.

We need to have access to water. We saw that resoundingly in Detroit. There are tons of tons of water issues that need to be addressed, and lead is just one of them. And that's something we'll have to wait to talk about later, because as we all know, water is the issue of the future. Thank you so much to my guests. Dr. Eric Schwartz, professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, co-founder of Blue Conduit,

and Alexis Smith, Community and Technology Associate for the Nonprofit Organization of Freshwater Future based in Toledo. Thank you both. Thank you for having you. Thank you. And if our listeners are curious about what their water pipes are made of, you can find out. Learn how to tell if your pipes are lead, copper, steel, or PVC, and help identify areas for tap water testing and infrastructure replacements. Why don't know how to do all of that?

Well, head to our crowdsource science project, crowd the tap. We have a link for it up on our website, ScienceFriety.com slash lead pipes. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about how soil can soak up CO2 and combat climate change, restorative agriculture.

After the break, stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Perhaps you recall a chilling scene in the moon Interstellar. You know, the film takes place in a dystopian future where a global crop light is slowly rendering the planet uninhabitable. Corn is the last viable crop. Dust storms, like the one depicted in the film, threaten humanity's survival. All right, it's dozy. Again, let's mask up. The scary part is it's not just science fiction. Scientists are warning that if we don't adopt more

sustainable farming practices will deplete the soil of vital nutrients and actually accelerate climate change. But there is hope because the soil can help save the planet. The earth soil contains about 2,500 gigatons of carbon. That's more than three times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and four times the amount stored in all living plants and animals. And the soil, in union with the Plants that grow on and in it may have an unlimited capacity to suck CO2 out of the air and store it underground, carbon sequestration through a farming technique called regenerative agriculture. That's what we're going to talk about. How does the earth under our feet become the world's largest carbon sink, and can it really

help us combat climate change? Here to dig into some soil science with us are my guests. Tom Newmark, co-founder and chair of the carbon underwent. Dr. Diana Wall, Professor of Biology in the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at Colorado State University. Welcome both of you to Science Friday. Thank you. Pleasure to be with you. Nice to have you. Tom, let me begin with you. Research published by the Rodale Institute of which you collaborated says that if farmers around the world adapt regenerative practices, the soil could sequester, well, 100% or more. Of course,

carbon emissions of CO2 made by people. Is this soil able to store so much carbon? I think the time will tell. It's very clear with five billion hectares of land that we can work with, both cropland and grassland, using regenerative agriculture at a scale of that dimension, Sciences are already demonstrating that we can sequester or resequestor the CO2 that right now is a legacy that afflicts us in the atmosphere and put it back to work for us in living soil. So the science is developing and it's very encouraging that we will be able to meet the challenge of the climate crisis by invoking the power of regenerative agriculture. Well, you've raised that. Now we have to get into it a bit to understand it. You explain the process involving photosynthesis. I understand it.

You're talking about pulling CO2 from the air. You turn it into liquid carbon, so to speak. Send that juice into the roots. What happens then under the soil? There's this ballet, this incredibly complex choreography between the exudates, the sugars, that the plant creates via photosynthesis, as it nourishes both the plant and the entire soil food web, all of the microbes, the protists, the archaea, the nematodes, the bacteria, the fungi that live in the soil are hungry for that liquid sugar, for the solar energy that

is packaged in that sweet form and delivered through the roots. In exchange for that liquid sugar, the soil food web, the microbial community will deliver to the plants at their roots, biologically available nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium and other minerals that the soil food web has the unique ability to render biologically available. So it's that underground commodity exchange whereby the soil food web gives to the plant those nutrients and the plant gives to the soil food web the liquid carbon produced, via photosynthesis that transfers the carbon from the atmosphere into the soil food web. And then, of course, the soil food web, the microbial community, it lives, it flourishes,

it dies, it has a life cycle. And as that community of life in the soil, frankly, excretes and then expires, it creates what is called necromass, which in combination with mineral particles in the soil ultimately creates what is called soil organic matter. In other words, plants in collaboration with the underground microbial community actually creates the soil. It's not so much that the soil absorbs the carbon as the carbon is actually creating new soil via the mechanisms of the life forms that live in it and on it. is fascinating. Diana, I know that you study the organisms that make up the soil microbiome. We know what it takes to make a healthy gut microbiome. So what goes into making a healthy soil

microbiome? It's quite amazing that we have so many different types of animals and microbes below ground that have contributed to this. And what they need is what was just talked about. You know, they need some carbon. And so that is the basis of the food. and soils. But there's so many different types of animals and microbes in there, and they all have different jobs. They have multiple functions, I guess I would say. You know, they have like three jobs a day that they're doing. And these include things like, you know, making air spaces through the soil so that they can travel and the roots can move. Or they also are doing things like gluing pieces of carbon in different forms throughout the soil. And so it's a very intricate process of how all this

life below ground transforms, say, a leaf that falls on the soil into different types of carbon and nutrients that are used by plants. I guess I would just say that it's a little factory going on with these many different organisms and they're not all the same everywhere. Do we know which organisms, which soil organisms are best for storing carbon, Diana? No, I don't think there's any one group. I think now scientists are thinking more of that it's kind of a consortia or a big network of interactions below your feet. And so when we start breaking these connections with pollution or some type of disturbance, you know, pouring concrete over it for a parking lot, we break these connections of the biota below ground and they're not able to perform the

services below ground or to support the biodiversity above ground. Okay. So, So, Tom, soils play an important role in drawing down carbon from the atmosphere, but they can also release carbon, right? I mean, the IPCC report estimates that something like 25 to 30 percent of global emissions comes from agricultural industry. What are farmers doing incorrectly that releases all this CO2? Frankly, there's been a long and regrettable commission of agricultural malpractice. If you think of the soil as living tissue, and as Dr. Walsoe beautifully explained just now, it's this collaborative community of microorganisms that create the tissue of the soil. To pass a steel blade, a plow through that living tissue is a violent disruption of the integrity

of the soil. In addition, pumping synthetic nitrogen, different pestis. into that living tissue, it disrupts and distorts the healthy activity of that community of life. So frankly, everything that we have been celebrating and glorifying in the industrial agricultural system that we now have is in some ways responsible for the destruction of that living community. And not only is the IPCC, of course, correct. and looking at modern agriculture as a source of CO2 contamination. But historically, somewhere between 20 to 40% of all of the legacy CO2 in the atmosphere

has somehow been transferred from damaged soil back into the atmosphere. So that is the challenge. But now using regenerative agriculture, we can reverse that and put that top. CO2 back to work for us as a tonic by reinvigorating, by reviving the soil, living soil tissue. And how can they do this? I was fascinated by reading the report where you talk about when farmers adopt regenerative farming, even degraded soils, even sandy soils in the desert can be turned very quickly into fertile fields by planting something called green manure. And green manure is not some kind of fertilizer from animals, right? No, it is not. Green manure and green manure cover crops

are living plants that in some way are nourishing, are revitalizing the soil. And there are many cases. In fact, there are millions of cases of farmers around the world, even in the most degraded, sandy desert-like soils, using regenerative agriculture and being able to, to recreate every year two centimeters or more of new topsoil. So this is the misunderstanding. There's this common idea that it takes a century to recreate one centimeter of soil. And that's the case where there's no concerted activity of the soil food web at work. But where you're using plants effectively and regeneratively, we can add an inch of top soil every two years, even in the most degraded desert-like environments. And that's just not my observation. That's the observation of agronomists,

food scientists, smallholder farmers by the tens of millions around the world. Diana, you agree? It seems to me that there's been a paradigm shift that we, now realize, and of course the people working the soil or the growers, the farmers who know this, that we need to put back into soil if we're going to have a sustainable soil for the future. And we also have a lot of studies that are showing that it's not just putting back the carbon and expecting that the living organisms below ground are going to immediately respond, and we have the community we had before it was degraded. That does take time to build some of the connections up.

I kind of think of it as like if you have a circle and you put as many dots as you can inside that circle with your pencil. And then they're all connected. That's the way the soil was before it was degraded. And as we degraded, those connections are broken. So then we come and we try to regenerate the soil to put more carbon back into it, to do it in a more natural way. what we see is these connections over time start to rebuild among the different biota that are there. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking with Tom Newmark and Dr. Diana Wall about soil and soil health. Now, both of you say that the farmers are smart enough, and the farmers I've met are really very smart about what they know about what's going on in the soil.

But there's also the economic side. Is there not, Tom? How do we get farmers to change their habits and yet give them the yields and the profits that they want to make? Well, Ira, if there's no soil, there will be no yields and there will be no profitability. So we have to look at this realistically. We're losing about 24 billion tons of top soil every year because of agricultural malfeasance. The FAA estimates that at present rates of soil degradation, there'll be no soil left to grow anything in perhaps only 60 years. So if you're looking at this economically, there frankly is no choice but to proceed regeneratively because without soil, there will be no agricultural opportunity whatsoever. So when I look at this and when others in the regenerative community look at this, we see

regenerative agriculture as the great economic engine that promises to deliver a future for farmers and for food consumers. But it's more than that. Whether you're in the business of growing corn, if you're a smallholder farmer, and there are, frankly, billions of smallholder farmers around the world. What we know is that using green manure cover crops and other regenerative practices, your crops will increase, your yields will increase, your input costs will go down, you will be more profitable. It takes a few years for the living systems to revive, for the biology to revive. But once the biology is reestablished in the soil, then this is a recipe for greater yields and profitability for farmers. Dr. Well, are you optimistic about the future? I am optimistic.

And I can give you a couple of reasons why. One, I think there's a greater awareness not only at the level of growers, but at the scientific level and higher at the UN level. I think that we're seeing desertification. So we've got the, you know, policies or the UN commission to combat desertification. You've got a convention on biological diversity that is concerned about what are we losing in our soils. And will the soils continue to give us the benefits, the human benefits, things like nutrient cycling and regulation of climate and cleaning water as it goes through the soils? So there's a number of different types of environmental agencies that are now looking kind of kind of of from the top down about how do we manage our soils better, not just in agriculture, but all soils, whether they're in forest, whether they're the deserts we've already mentioned, or the tundra,

or in both polar regions. I think this is coming from a lot of different fronts, and all of a sudden, soils and their biodiversity are at the center of it. Well, we've run out of time so much to talk about as usual and so important a topic. I'd like to thank my guests. Tom Newmark, co-founder and chair of the Carbon Underground, a nonprofit that educates governments, business leaders, and the public on the impact of regenerative agriculture on climate change. Dr. Diana Wall, professor of biology, in the School of Global Environmental Sustainability, Colorado State University.

Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Really a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. One last thing before we go. We lost an anchor and a pioneer in our science journalism. community last Saturday. Sharon Begley's long career covered four decades of science writing. She was one of a few journalists whose byline carried as much weight as her story. If Sharon was writing it, you took notice. Her views were always thoughtful, like the time she discussed on this

program, how writing a book changed her life. It has made me even more convinced that hardwiring is just empirically incorrect. And this has shown me yet other studies, more research, a whole, you know, field of science that disproves this idea that, you know, you don't have any power over who you are or what you become, which I find, yes, personally appealing. I mean, it's more, I mean, Lord knows it's more optimistic than the idea that the brain you enter the ripe old age of three with is the brain you're going to be stuck with forever. Sharon Begley passed away at the age of 64. Condolences to all friends and and family. Charles Berkwurst is our director. Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor,

Katie Feather, and Kathleen Davis, B.J. Leideman composed our theme music. If you missed any part of the program, or you would like to hear it again. Subscribe to our podcasts. Or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.