Protecting the public from the most concerning environmental chemicals and contaminants involves many individual steps. For example, when an agency like the US EPA or FDA evaluates a chemical used in consumer products, they want to evaluate: the hazards associated with that chemical, how that chemical causes harm, how much of the chemical is released … Continue reading The weak link: gaps in exposure assessments
What harmful chemicals are in pregnant people and how do they get there? How are chemical exposures during pregnancy linked to future health problems in mothers and babies? How can we reduce toxic chemicals in our homes and environment? These are the questions the DREAM Study seeks to answer, and we need your help! … Continue reading Pregnant? Contribute to a healthier future and join the DREAM study!
Dr. Nicholas Chartres wrote the following response to media coverage on ultra-processed foods. What if I said that if you are eating a diet of high or ultra-processed food from packets, filled with chemicals, you have a significantly higher risk of dying younger from heart disease or cancer? Pretty scary, huh? Well, in the USA, … Continue reading Highly processed foods: recipe for disease?
Melamine – a chemical found in certain types of plastic dishware that the World Health Organization recently classified as “possibly carcinogenic” – made global news for causing outbreaks of kidney failure and deaths in pets in 2004 (Korea) and 2007 (U.S.) and later in children in 2008 (China). This was because manufacturers had added melamine … Continue reading Chemicals behind global kidney failure outbreaks found in US pregnant women
Whether or not you’ve heard of the chemical bisphenol A, better known as BPA, studies show that it’s almost certainly in your body. BPA is used in the manufacturing of products like plastic water bottles, baby bottles, toys and food packaging, including in the lining of cans. BPA is one of many harmful chemicals in … Continue reading Decades of research document the detrimental health effects of BPA – an expert on environmental pollution and maternal health explains what it all means
Redlining, a discriminatory practice created by the federal government in the 1930s to deny mortgages in certain neighborhoods characterized by a higher proportion of Black and immigrant residents, established a lasting legacy of systemic racism and environmental inequities. So how can we better understand how historical redlining impacts our health and environment today? With funding … Continue reading Exploring how historic redlining impacts health and environment today
In the recent ProPublica article, “She’s Supposed to Protect Americans from Toxic Chemicals. First, She Has to Fix Trump’s Mess and Decades of Neglect,” Dr. Michal Freedhoff, PhD, EPA’s head of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) said: “You can’t ask companies to spend a bunch of money producing data that already … Continue reading EPA can require chemical companies to provide data on PFAS risks. Why isn’t it?
Extreme heat is a burgeoning health threat unleashed by our climate crisis and predicted to get worse amid increasing global warming. But current approaches to health care have generally overlooked exposure to extreme heat in the treatment and prevention of illness. We sought to address this problem. Heat waves have already become more extreme and … Continue reading Surviving Extreme Heat: A climate crisis project
One of the key issues that the scientific community, EPA’s own Scientific Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC), and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) had with EPA’s original systematic review method (TSCA Method) to evaluate chemical risks under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), was how EPA evaluated the quality of the … Continue reading Where did all the evidence go?
They may be called forever chemicals because they can stay in your body for years, but we don’t have forever to enact health protective decisions on PFAS (per- and poly-fluorinated alkyl substances). This is especially true given the large body of scientific evidence on prenatal exposures to PFAS and effects on fetal growth that the … Continue reading EPA uses systematic reviews to guide new PFAS drinking water standards
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