Episode 17: Garbage Data, Toxic Exposure, and the AI Gap in Environmental Health

<p>In this episode of From Models to Medicine, we sit down with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahidaniels/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Sarah Daniels</a>, an environmental health researcher, who makes the argument that the chemicals making us sick might also be our best clues for building better drugs. She traces that idea from a 1976 discovery about dioxins all the way to an FDA-approved psoriasis treatment in 2023 — and asks what AI could accelerate if the field finally got its data act together.</p><p>Sarah brings up where AI in environmental health is genuinely stuck; siloed industry data, models built only for acute toxicity, and a chronic low-dose problem that no one has cracked. She also shares how she used APIs to build her own real-time funding tracker for microplastics research in under a month, and why the gap between what AI promises and what environmental health can actually feed it is one of the most under appreciated bottlenecks in the field right now.</p><p><strong>Links mentioned in this episode: </strong></p><ol><li>Historic ARPA-H program funding announcement on Microplastics: <a href="https://arpa-h.gov/explore-funding/programs/stomp" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://arpa-h.gov/explore-funding/programs/stomp</a></li><li>Sarah&#39;s two cents on the ARPA-H Microplastics program:  <a href="https://engineeredresilience.substack.com/p/a-microplastics-prelude-for-engineered" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://engineeredresilience.substack.com/p/a-microplastics-prelude-for-engineered</a></li><li>Aggregated trends in microplastics from the non-peer-reviewed literature (Trendspotter App):<a href="https://www.engineeredresilience.org/microplastics" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://www.engineeredresilience.org/microplastics</a></li><li>Stay up to date on latest releases from Sarah&#39;s work on Engineered Resilience by signing up for substack: <a href="https://engineeredresilience.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://engineeredresilience.substack.com/</a></li><li>Report on unexpected health effects observed after LA fires showing how questions remain post-exposure to pollutants:<a href="https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-12-17/la-fires-heart-attacks-strange-blood-test-results-spiked" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-12-17/la-fires-heart-attacks-strange-blood-test-results-spiked</a></li><li>Can a Biologist Fix a Radio? - great piece on the necessity to understand biology at the systems-level: <a href="https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/fulltext/S1535-6108(02)00133-2" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/fulltext/S1535-6108(02)00133-2</a></li></ol>