Looking Back: The 2030 Los Angeles Arsenic Crisis and Operation Porifera A PODCAST BY PAST FUTURES / directed BY ANDREA BINZ, ZOE VOSS LEE, and ana mangino

Introduction

In 2030, scientist discovered that arsenic poisoning of the Los Angeles City water supply was behind the greatest historical increase in cancer diagnoses ever recorded. This lead to a medical catastrophe akin to the effects of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.

Since the early decades of the 20th Century, the constant over-pumping of groundwater has been releasing arsenic into the city water system. However, it wasn't until the "Great Drought" of 2027 that over-pumping reached new heights and arsenic concentrations in tap water increased exponentially. After the Los Angeles Water System was privatized in 2028, many corrupted practices between the private and public sector boosted the crisis, and by the time people realized the catastrophe that they have created, it was too late.

The 2020 Los Angeles Arsenic Crisis

Around 70% of the population in Los Angeles County experienced some kind of symptoms related to arsenic poisoning. Around 30% of cases developed chronic side effects that lead sometimes lead to death. Symptoms of arsenic poisoning often did not appear until eight weeks after exposure, allowing the crisis to grow dangerously without being detected for several months. Acute effects of arsenic poisoning include vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. In extreme cases, heart arrhythmias and organ failure may occur. Chronic effects include headaches, drowsiness, and an increased risk of skin, lung, liver, bladder, kidney, and colon cancers.

It didn't take long for the arsenic crisis news to go viral, people immediately began discarding contaminated produce and water. Grocery store's stocks of bottled water and ice were emptied within hours. The price of bottled water skyrocketed, leaving many low-income communities vulnerable and without access to drinking water. Throughout the year, the high-income neighborhoods were able to build their own reverse osmosis water filtration system. The upper-middle class struggled less to secure the highly demanded bottled water from different sources. However, low-income communities, where left in the position of having to choose between arsenic poisoning and dehydration. Once winter came, some homeowners and facilities started to collect rain water however they could so they could give and sometimes sell at very inflated prices. But this option was unsustainable in the long term as the crisis continued in the months following the natural winter rainy season in Southern California. A period of uncertainty arrived, people were unsure whether bathing or handwashing was a risk, and the fear that food might have been produced or prepared with contaminated sources hunted Angelinos everyday.

Scandals about price gouging and contaminated tap water being falsely sold as a safe water source led to several arrests, and made home testing kits imperative for renewed confidence in water from any source. After a whistleblower leaked messages between executives at Amazon Utilities, indicating that they knew about the contamination and hid it from the public eye, the importance of proving the efficiency of the testing kits became more urgent.

California declared a State of Emergency and stepped up to provide initial supplies of bottled water to Angelinos as a stopgap measure. However, a long-term solution was more elusive: after years of drought, the State was going to run out of supplies to help Angelinos to manage the water crisis, and many people will be left alone in a very vulnerable situation. Residents and businesses who could afford to temporarily relocate did so, creating ripple effects throughout the global economy. Simultaneously, the crisis spread as cities in other water scare regions- including Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Central America- began to suffer immensely as water companies diverted shipments from low- and middle-income nations to the United States.

An Unexpected Hero

Sponges are perhaps the oldest form of multicellular animal life on Earth. They are extremely resilient creatures that have survived the extreme climatic changes of the Earth over millennials. In particular, freshwater sponges are adapted to survive highly variable and even adverse conditions. Despite being known to have wide distributions throughout the northern hemisphere, freshwater sponges are often overlooked or mistaken for algae, and few studies have been conducted in the Western North American Continent until recent years. (Evans and Kitting, 2020)

In 2027, scientists at the University of Southern California identified for the first time a thriving population of Spongilla lacustris, a freshwater sponge in the Los Angeles River. The spongiologists noted that sponges seemed to be particularly concentrated downstream of wastewater treatment plants in Los Angeles, Burbank, and Glendale that provided a constant flow of water in the channel even in the dry season. As the crisis unfolded a few years later, this discovery took on new significance as water samples from the river revealed much lower concentrations of arsenic than expected. Further studies demonstrated that the sponges were the ones filtrating and cleaning the water from arsenic contamination.

Sponges have the ability to uptake and incorporate new endosymbionts into their tissues. The population of S. lacustris in the Los Angeles River exhibited a novel bacterium called Candidus Arsenophilium. This bacteria had the capacity to detoxify and subsequently store arsenic within the sponge's tissues, thereby giving the sponges a competitive advantage in the contaminated waters. Similar properties for detoxification of arsenic and barium were previously identified in 2017 by Rey Karen et al. ("Sponge-associated bacteria mineralize arsenic and barium on intracellular vesicles") for Entotheonella sp. and its host, the Red Sea sponge Theonella swinhoei.

This research vaulted to the forefront of scientific inquiry as a potential solution to Los Angeles' arsenic crisis, being featured on the August 2030 edition of the prestigious Science magazine. When C. Asenophilium failed attempts at culture in vitro, the scientists began exploring how S. lacustris itself could be employed to help struggling communities of Angelinos.

Operation Porifera

During a year of loss and mistrust, the federal government created Operation Porifera, inspired by the research published in Science magazine. By January of 2031, SponGea, a startup formed by the same scientists who led the initial discovery, announced that they have successfully brought to market a low-cost arsenic water filter with S. lacustris propagated in the Los Angeles River. In a move applauded by organizations worldwide, the first million SponGea water filters went to low-income individuals at no cost, providing vulnerable communities with clean water for decades.