On a hot summer day, there’s nothing better than a dip in a cold pool. But you know who can ruin that for you? A scientist who studies pool chemistry. What chemical reactions are happening in that swimming pool when the water comes into contact with our bodily fluids and skin products?
Environmental engineer Ernest Blatchley sits down with Flora Lichtman to discuss his findings after two decades of research, including how urine in a pool makes that chlorine smell, and his work to make the air of the Paris Olympics’ indoor pools less toxic.
Guest:
Dr. Ernest Blatchley is a professor of environmental engineering at Purdue University, based in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Other episodes you may enjoy:
A ‘Dune’-Inspired Space Suit To Turn Astronaut Pee Into Water
The Evolution Of An Enzyme Engineer Who Changed Chemistry
Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Плейлист
Science Friday
During the early Cold War era, the United States Army and later the NSA began recruiting and training codebreakers and intelligence officers to decipher intercepted Soviet messages.
Among those recrui...
The tropical waters of Sri Lanka, an island off the coast of India, are home to a population of blue whales unlike any other. These whales stay put, while every other known population migrates. That d...
In the last couple months, Vermont, Alabama, and Oklahoma have passed data privacy laws. Massachusetts is negotiating its own version. Meanwhile, congressional lawmakers have introduced national priva...
In 2020, Andrea Ghez shared the Nobel Prize for her observations of a supermassive compact object at the center of the Milky Way galaxy—an object that has all the hallmarks of a supermassive black hol...
Back in May, a paper published in Nature Sustainability reignited a decades-old debate about coastal Louisiana: Should people leave? Climate researchers wrote that due to rising sea levels, coastal Lo...
Pompeii is known for its disastrous end with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, but for archeologists, what came before is just as interesting. Researchers are using artifacts left behind in the remarkab...
An outbreak of the foodborne illness cyclosporiasis has sent thousands of people running to the bathroom this summer. Health officials have linked the outbreak to lettuce served at Taco Bell locations...
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled for an early launch at the end of August. It will rest about a million miles from Earth at Lagrange point 2, where forces of gravity and motion balan...
For two decades, a perplexing illness has been spreading: After a lone-star tick bite, people find themselves with a severe allergic reaction to red meat. The CDC estimates up to 450,000 people in the...
One of the most irresistible questions in sci-fi stories about aliens is what our reaction will be when we learn of their existence. Horror? Bewilderment? Relief? Euphoria? It’s a scenario we love to...
Dino Martins has plucked maggots out of a dead elephant, pulled botflies out of camel snot, and willingly let a horsefly feast on him. Why? Because he’s obsessed with parasites.
Dino is an entomologis...
In March, China became the first country to approve an invasive brain-computer interface beyond clinical trials. The implant, called NEO, is now available to some patients with limb paralysis due to a...
What happens when the skies are no longer dark at night? Writer Craig Childs biked from the brightest night sky, to the darkest, to find out what we lose when the lights don’t go out. He joins Host Ir...
The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has become the third-largest on record. And while the regional response is more robust than it was during the largest outbreak...
Gut feelings, trusting your gut, butterflies: We have lots of expressions about how our brains and our bowels are intertwined. But how well do we understand the science of this on the biomolecular lev...
The band Phish has toured for over 40 years. One of the draws of their legendary live shows—which can go on for 8 hours—is finding moments of “flow,” when the band members lock into an improvised jam,...
Americans pay roughly three times as much for prescription meds as people in other wealthy nations. But why?
Tahir Amin argues it’s largely to do with how our patent systems work. He’s been on both si...
If you hear “colonial America” and “science,” one name probably comes to mind: Benjamin Franklin. But he wasn’t the only one thinking big thoughts and asking big questions. Many other natural philosop...
Researchers have engineered an artificial cell out of chemicals and biomolecules that, at a basic level, can eat, grow, duplicate its own genetic code, and reproduce itself. The cell, dubbed SpudCell,...
Imagine this: You’re an astronaut, you’ve landed on the moon, and as you’re taking one small step for mankind, you kick up a bunch of lunar dirt. Now, tiny, jagged particles of dust are on your spaces...
Around 25 years ago, Ardem Patapoutian set out to investigate the fundamental biology behind our sense of touch. Through a long process of gene elimination, he identified a class of sensors in the cel...
Hundreds of thousands of years ago, deep in the mountains of the Yukon, a ground squirrel pooped. That scat stayed frozen for millenia—until very recently, when researchers thawed it out and realized...
Pancreatic cancer is among the most deadly forms of cancer, and it can be difficult to catch early. But there’s some good news: Clinical trials of a new drug called daraxonrasib found that it doubled...
On a hot summer day, there’s nothing better than a dip in a cold pool. But you know who can ruin that for you? A scientist who studies pool chemistry. What chemical reactions are happening in that swi...
The federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has proposed rule changes that would bring a major shift in how scientific grants are awarded by U.S. government agencies. Under the current process,...
If you have arachnophobia, consider this your opportunity to try exposure therapy: A new study suggests that 415 million years ago, in modern-day England and Wales, a scorpion the length of a golden r...
The FDA recently approved a sunscreen ingredient called bemotrizinol, or BEMT, that’s been used in Europe and Asia for years. This is the first new sunscreen ingredient approved in the United States i...
If you watch sports, whether the recent NBA finals or the ongoing World Cup matches, you may have noticed that the athletes aren’t the only ones putting on a show. The announcers seem to be playing a...
There is a murderous crime spree happening right under—and perhaps inside—our noses. Killer microbes armed with weapons are eviscerating, assassinating, and detonating their fellow microbes. And the n...
Do you ever hear a song that transports you to a specific place and time? This auditory wormhole has a name: musical daydreams. Music cognition expert Elizabeth Margulis studies why they happen, and w...