EDF Health

Selected tag(s): contamination

Linking everyday chemicals to disease: New science keeps on intensifying the writing on the wall

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

As a Washington policy geek, it’s sometimes hard not to let the ups and downs of political prospects for achieving real improvements in public health protections from toxic chemicals get me down.  The tenacity with which some stakeholders insist on throwing wrenches into the works to block efforts to reach middle ground is indeed depressing.

But through it all, there is one constant that continually restores my optimism that we’ll eventually get where we need to get to:  Science keeps moving forward and inexorably points toward the need for reform.  I will use this post to briefly highlight four recent studies that demonstrate the changing landscape of our knowledge of how environmental factors, including toxic chemical exposures, are affecting our health.  What’s noteworthy about these studies is that they all identified adverse health effects in human populations, and linked those effects to early-life exposures.  They all also illustrate the complex interplay between chemical exposures and social or other environmental factors that directly challenges the overly simplistic and non-scientific approach to causation that our chemicals policies have taken for decades.

Below are summaries of and links to these new studies:

  • Early-life exposure to PCE is associated with later-life risky behaviors.
  • Phthalate exposure is associated with excess weight in New York City children.
  • Exposure to perfluorinated chemicals may interfere with childhood vaccine effectiveness.
  • Epigenetic changes are associated with socio-economic status and biomarkers for cardiovascular disease.

Read More »

Posted in Emerging Science, Health Science / Also tagged , , , , , , | Read 2 Responses

Twin dangers from TCE: Widespread exposure, and now a strong link to Parkinson disease

Jennifer McPartland, Ph.D., is a Health Scientist.

A study published online in the Annals of Neurology last week, “Solvent Exposures and Parkinson Disease Risk in Twins,” adds to scientific evidence linking exposure to the solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE, and other common solvents with onset of Parkinson disease.  Parkinson disease is a debilitating condition well known for symptoms of trembling but can also include slowed motion, impaired posture and balance, and loss of automatic movements (e.g. blinking, arm swaying when walking).  Most unfortunately, it has no cure. 

According to the authors, this new twin study is the first confirmation in a population-based study of a significant association between exposure to TCE and incidence of Parkinson disease.    Read More »

Posted in Emerging Science, Health Policy, Health Science, Regulation / Also tagged , , , , , , | Read 1 Response

What are you, really? How our microbiome mediates chemical exposures

Allison Tracy is a Chemicals Policy Fellow. Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

For millennia people have contemplated the question “who am I?”  But how about the even more fundamental question, “what am I”?  The human body is made up of about 10 trillion cells that form our tissues and organs.  But did you know that the human gut is the home to microbes that comprise 10 times more – that is, 100 trillion – cells?  And that, while the human genome contains about 23,000 genes, there are some 3 million genes in the microbes living in the human gut?  Obviously, this complicates things.  It arguably means we could be considered to be more microbe than human!

These numbers should tip us off to the importance of what is known as our “microbiome.”  New science is shedding light on the central function of the microbiome as a mediator between external agents to which we’re exposed and the impacts of those exposures.  Recent studies show, for example, that as chemicals pass through the gastrointestinal tract, they undergo major changes in bioavailability (i.e., how easily they are taken up into our bodies) and in their toxicity.  Recognition of the role of the microbiome is shifting the playing field for toxicology in fundamental ways.   Read More »

Posted in Emerging Science, Health Science / Also tagged , , , , , | Comments are closed

They paved paradise, all right, and with a potent human carcinogen to boot

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

Imagine if someone spread a human carcinogen across millions of acres of land.  Then imagine that the carcinogen was found to be entering surface waters due to runoff from the treated acreage.  And then that the carcinogen was found to be accumulating in the dust in homes located near the treated acres.

Far-fetched?  Hardly.  Welcome to the good ol’ US of A.   Read More »

Posted in Emerging Science, Health Science / Also tagged , , , , | Read 4 Responses