You have degrees in biochemistry and nursing. How did you become interested in public health, and the link between environmental pollutants and children’s health?
My undergraduate studies were in biochemistry. I really enjoyed the science and the molecular biology of the human body. After working in several different labs, I wanted more clinical experience so I went back to nursing school to learn more about the direct application of health. In nursing school I did a research assistantship with a professor who really got me interested child health, and gave me the unique opportunity to play with data. She said, “Here’s some data, now go answer some questions about learning disabilities in children.” I looked at the relationship between tobacco smoke exposure, lead, and some other environmental chemicals and learning disabilities. It was interesting to me that chemicals are things that we are involuntary exposed to, and largely have no control over. The only way to reduce exposure is to regulate chemicals—how they enter into the marketplace, and ultimately, how they enter into our environment. Doing work to reduce chemical exposure is what really drove my passion to be an epidemiologist and to seek advanced training in environmental health.
A lot of parents have concerns about toxic environments and health outcomes, but sometimes this leads to misunderstandings. When the word “toxic” is often mis-used, how do you differentiate your fact-based work from the noise?
For the advanced consumer of research, differentiating “fact” from “noise” is easy to do. However, for the lay public, it is difficult to find unbiased information that isn’t funded by special interest groups. With chemicals, there are people who firmly believe that a certain chemical is toxic no matter what and likewise, there are people on the other side, who firmly believe that same chemical is not toxic, and nothing will change their mind.
Unfortunately, some of the confusion is because there has been erosion in the public trust of science. We have to get out there and talk to people. Translating science becomes very important. It boils down, really, to us engaging.
Chemicals is a broad term of course. What specific chemicals do you focus on in your research and how prevalent are these in our everyday lives?
When I started out, I was focused on lead and tobacco smoke, particularly on the effects of second-hand tobacco smoke on children. Soon, I decided it was important to start studying other chemicals that were out there. I’ve spent a lot of time studying bisphenol A, which is a compound used to make polycarbonate plastics and some resins, which are used in things like food can linings and some medical equipment. I’ve also studied phthalates, which are a large multifunctional class of chemicals used in everything from personal care products to pharmaceuticals. More recently I studied triclosan, which is an anti-microbial compound used in some toothpastes, and used in hand soaps and hand washes until recently in the US. I’ve also been studying perfluoroalkyl substances—a large class of chemicals of which thousands are used to manufacture water- and stain-repellent fabrics.
The traditional paradigm has been to study these chemicals one at a time—let’s study the association between BPA and ADHD, for example. But we know that exposure doesn’t occur one at a time like in a study. We are exposed to lots of things at once. So we’ve been studying chemical mixtures; what’s the effect of the “toxic soup” in our environment? Is there an effect of being exposed to all of these things at once? There’s a lot of excitement about that right now, so that’s one of the directions in which our work is headed.