Drugs Designed By AI, The Phosphorus Paradox, Regulating PFAS Chemicals. March 17, 2023, Part 1

Science Friday

At Long Last, More Regulations For Forever Chemicals

This week, the EPA proposed the first national standards for drinking water that would set limits on the amount of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) chemicals that would be allowed in water systems. There are thousands of different PFAS chemicals, which are often used industrially for properties such as heat, water and stain resistance—from fire-fighting foams to coatings on clothing and paper plates. They have come to be known as “forever chemicals” as they are extremely slow to break down in the environment. The chemicals have been linked to health problems, including cancer.

Katherine Wu, staff writer for The Atlantic, joins Ira to talk about the proposed regulations and how such a sweeping rule might be implemented nationwide. Wu also discusses her latest article on COVID-19 origins, and genetic analysis that could tie the pandemic back to raccoon dogs in the Wuhan market. They also talk about other news from the week in science, including research hinting at active volcanoes on Venus, a study of the effects of COVID-19 on maternal health during pregnancy, and research into curing HIV with stem cells from cord blood. Plus an explosion of seaweed, and the unveiling of a new space suit design.

How AI Is Changing The Drug Development Pipeline

Researching and developing new drugs is a notoriously long and expensive process, filled with a lot of trial and error. Before a new drug gets approved scientists must come up with something they think might work in the lab, test it in animals, and then if it passes those hurdles, clinical trials in humans. In an effort to smooth out some of the bumps along the road, a growing number of pharma companies are turning to new artificial intelligence tools in the hopes of making the process cheaper and faster. Ira talks with Will Douglas Heaven, senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review about his reporting on the topic.

An Ambitious Plan To Build Back Louisiana’s Coast

Louisiana will receive more than $2 billion to pay for an ambitious, first-of-its-kind plan to reconnect the Mississippi River to the degraded marshes on Plaquemines Parish’s west bank. A collective of federal and state agencies—the Louisiana Trustees Implementation Group—signed off on the multibillion-dollar Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion on Wednesday. The funding will come out of settlement dollars resulting from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Once constructed, the two-mile-long sediment diversion is expected to build up to 27 square miles of new land by 2050. In the next 50 years, as Louisiana’s coast continues to sink and global sea levels rise, the diversion is also projected to sustain one-fifth of the remaining land. “The Trustees believe that a sediment diversion is the only way to achieve a self-sustaining marsh ecosystem in the Barataria Basin,” wrote the implementation group in its decision.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Balancing The Good And Bad Of Phosphorus

Phosphorus is critical to life as we know it. In fact, every cell in the human body contains this important element. It’s also a key component in fertilizer. But not all of that fertilizer stays on crops—much of that phosphorus flows into waterways. Therein lies the rub: the runoff fertilizes the plant life growing in the water, creating toxic algal blooms. To top it all off, the phosphorus reserves in the United States are on track to disappear in just a few decades, according to some estimates.

Ira talks about the past, present, and future of phosphorus with Dan Egan, journalist in residence at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences, and author of the new book, The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and A World out of Balance.

Want to read The Devil’s Element with us? Join the SciFri Book Club and read along!

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.