The Cocktail Effect - ft. Andreas Kortenkamp

As we conclude the podcast, we reflect on the process of creating it and everything we learned along the way. Thank you for listening, and we hope you learned something new. We sure did!

Prevention is the key pillar of public health. After everything we've learned about EDCs, it can seem almost impossible to limit our exposure to them in everyday life. But several experts are here to show us that small steps can be taken to protect ourselves. The more we know about EDCs and the importance of limiting exposure, the more we can push for systemic change as well.

The future of the field of EDC research is bright, full of innovation and passion for finding solutions. Two of the young scientists leading the way in this field discuss developments to cleaning up EDCs from the environment and improving the study of risks these chemicals pose, illustrating the hope there is for things to get better. 

Females. Girls. Chicas. Sheilas. However you want to refer to them, women have made remarkable contributions to the field of EDCs. In this episode of A Daily Dose, we take a step away from the science and four special guests share with us their experiences as being women in this field of science, as well as their concerns that female-centered research is understudied.

The effects of EDCs – diseases, loss of IQ, behavioral changes – all add up. Dr. Leonardo Trasande has actually calculated that very cost, and it’s staggering. He joins us to describe just how much EDCs contribute to global health costs and where the brunt of the burden of these costs lies.

Could EDCs be a risk factor for Type II diabetes? We delve into the meaning of the term “diabetogens” in this episode featuring Dr. Angel Nadal, who has found BPA can disrupt pancreatic cell function – leading to a greater risk for developing diabetes.

The Clarity BPA study was intended to blend both academic and regulatory study designs to get a unified interpretation of the effects of endocrine disruptor BPA … whether this study was successful is up for debate. Two scientists who were directly involved with Clarity BPA, Dr. Jerry Heindel and Dr. Pat Hunt, are featured in this episode to give some insight into this infamous, controversial study.

Phthalates are a well-studied class of chemicals that have been shown to affect male reproductive health as well as brain development. But how do we know that phthalates are responsible for these effects on health? Dr. Youssef Oulhote helps us understand the epidemiological principles surrounding the association of a chemical to a particular effect. 

Who would drink a cocktail of chemicals? When you put it like that, no one. But in our environment we are exposed to a mixture of chemicals all the time; we ingest them through food and water all the same. When these chemicals mix together, they create the "cocktail effect," meaning the effect they can have on health may be different than their individual effects. Dr. Andreas Kortenkamp is pushing for a change in the way chemicals are evaluated, so that their risk to health is assessed in mixtures and not just individually.

Join us for episode two of our "podcast within a podcast," brought to you by students at Great Neck South High School on Long Island. They continue the discussion of advocacy around environmental exposures that contribute to breast cancer.