January 13, 2024 — A new study this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science tells us that every bottle of water we’re drinking has hundreds of thousands of nanoplastics. Should we care? A Blank Slate, Tough to Study This study is important simply because it fills a void in knowledge about how much these nanoplastics are […]
August 18, 2023 — Health disrupting chemicals are spreading to the farthest reaches of the planet. Even on the remote Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic, they’re showing up. Through carcinogenicity or obesogenicity, they can wreak havoc with our health. But as we follow the public discourse about the bad actors, one thing becomes quite clear. Carcinogenicity prompts alarm […]
July 18, 2023 — Barbie Girl (the song) told us life in plastic is fantastic, but the knowledge that we’re swimming in microplastics gives us reason for second thoughts. These tiny particles of plastic are accumulating in the oceans (even the Arctic), in the air, in the soil, in our food, and even in our bodies. This is an emerging […]
May 19, 2023 — One question that holds us captive in obesity is the question of its origins. Why has its prevalence been rising so relentlessly now for decades? At ECO2023, this question inserted itself into one of the major themes of the meeting – a pursuit of the determinants of obesity. Commercial Determinants Emma Boyland and Aileen McGloin […]
August 23, 2020 — Sage advice from an attorney about making safety claims for any product: safe is a four-letter word. In other words, an absolute assurance of safety is almost always a lie. So the challenge is to figure out if something is safe enough. For example,consider the “everywhere chemical” known as BPA (bisphenol-A). A new study in […]
June 18, 2019 — It’s not part of anyone’s dietary guidelines, but we’re consuming it nonetheless. Plastic is all around us – in the form of microparticles. We drink them, eat them, and breathe them. They’re in our food and our stools. By 2050, the world’s oceans will be filled with more plastic than fish. How Much? A new […]
July 15, 2017 — Mac and cheese sits near the top of the chart for America’s favorite comfort foods. But here’s a clearly discomforting thought. Yesterday, on National Mac and Cheese Day, we learned that those convenient dinners in a box have alarming levels of endocrine disrupting chemicals in them. Specifically, the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) reports […]
January 20, 2016 — A new study in PLOS ONE adds to the evidence that the endocrine disrupting properties of persistent organic pollution can be a significant factor in the dual epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Jung-Wei Chang and colleagues examined the relationship between abdominal obesity, insulin resistance, and exposure to dioxin. They found a five-fold higher risk of elevated insulin […]
November 27, 2015 — The stuff they put into pizza boxes might cause obesity — and we’re not talking about the pizza. We’re talking about perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) that are put into the box itself to repel the grease. A new study published in Obesity finds that mothers with high PFAS exposure gave birth to children with higher BMI, waist circumference, and body […]
September 30, 2015 — You can be forgiven for believing that the global epidemic of obesity is simply a “preventable” problem caused by unhealthy behaviors of “dietary patterns and physical activity.” The World Health Organization, CDC, and innumerable other authorities have repeated this supposition enough so that it has assumed the status of a fact. Thus, the notion that chemical exposure […]
