[Music]
[Music]
so in the spirit of Halloween
let’s make vampire blood safe for
vampires again what why would you do
that well if you think about it
vampires are at the top of the food
chain they drink human blood
unfortunately because of design errors
and ignorance there are thousands
hundreds if not thousands of synthetic
organic chemicals that have never been
part of human body chemistry in that
blood and they are linked by serious
science has come out over the last 20
years to a range of today’s epidemics of
chronic diseases so if we can make
vampire foods safe for vampires again by
reducing exposures we can make people
healthier this is a list a partial list
of the epidemics that we are facing
today things like breast cancer prostate
cancer diabetes obesity autism these
have increased dramatically over the
20th and 21st centuries shocking numbers
in 1975 that one in 5,000 boys developed
autism today it’s one in 50
that’s a hundredfold increase that does
not bode well for our grandchildren and
what we know from this science is that
while all of these factors are multi all
these diseases are multifactorial
chemical contamination contributes some
part of that body burden of that of that
disease burden and what that does is
give us an opportunity to improve human
health by
acting on the science that we know today
I am confident that virtually everyone
in this room through family and friends
has suffered from one or more of these
conditions we can change that and if we
change that if we reduce the exposures
then not only do we improve human health
but we make that blood safe again for
vampires
so how did that fetus get to there from
a fertilized egg and how does it get
from there to a fully functional healthy
adult
well hormones guide gene expression they
guide the turning on and turning off of
genes which occurs throughout our
lifetimes trillions at times a second
it’s the symphony of life endocrine
disrupting compounds EDC’s hack that
system sometimes they turn genes off
when we need them sometimes they turn
the wrong genes on at the wrong time and
when changes when hacking like that
happens to the hormone system you wind
up at risk to some of those epidemics
it’s a problem how are we exposed to
things like this well many industrial
chemicals that are produced through the
process of petroleum distillation have
endocrine disrupting characteristics
things like bisphenol A which you
probably all know of as BPA and the
phthalates that Richard mentioned these
are problematic chemicals they interfere
with hormone action pesticides
pesticides get into conventional food as
and in direct our kitchens they’re also
sprayed they’re picked up and missed
they’re spread into those houses near
that helicopter spraying pesticides and
lastly they evaporate in the heat of the
Sun they volatilize they go into the
clouds they get into the raindrops and
they can be rained down on land several
hundred kilometres away
Nick Kristof the New York Times Colman’s
wrote about this this past week and I’ll
paraphrase what he said there we’ve done
a really good job at lowering
contamination in the outer world in the
air and the water of the rivers we have
done a terrible job at eliminating
contamination in the inner world
especially of the developing fetus and
the brain and that’s underlying a lot of
these problems so how do those things
get into us we bring them into our homes
we we don’t question the safety of
conventional produce we don’t understand
that farmed salmon have persistent
organic pollutants in them at high
levels we use pesticides freely we use
personal care products which
surprisingly contain things like salads
things as simple as a couch and as
complicated as a computer have-have
brominated flame retardants in them
which leach leak out of the those those
that equipment and the couch enter the
dust get on your floor and then are
picked up in the hands of a toddler
who’s crawling and put into the mouth
something as banal as thermal paper
receipts which we handle every day when
we grab the receipt at the gas station
or at the ATM those are coated in dust
with BPA and every time you handle one
it’s transferred to your skin and it
penetrates and gets into your
bloodstream cooking utensils some not
all but some are made out of materials
that leach endocrine disrupting
compounds also and then there’s food
packaging equipment materials plastics
that stuff the plastics in those
materials leach into the food with which
it comes into contact especially if it’s
heated so let me give you a hint don’t
microwave in plastic it’s just a bad
idea
this science of endocrine disruption has
undergone a revolution over the last 20
years and I’m gonna summarize three
pillars of that science for you
things that completely change how we
think about the consequences of that
stuff we’re bringing into our homes
every day first low doses matter a lot
we used to think only high doses matter
low doses matter and I’ll give you an
example
second events in the womb don’t stay in
the womb it fetal exposures can lead to
problems much later in life third how we
assess safety how the FDA and the EPA
assess safety are based on profoundly
flawed assumptions they’re getting it
wrong
today so low doses matter a lot – frogs
mating what you don’t know about that
picture is that the lower frog is the
brother of the upper frog and exposure
to a pesticide at 2.5 parts per billion
when it was a tadpole let it to grow up
as a fully functional female capable of
growing of laying eggs that can be
fertilized capable of having those
fertilized eggs grow up into adults and
then reproduce the next generation the
pesticide is atrazine a commonly used
herbicide in the Midwest 2.5 parts per
billion low amounts matter what is that
anyone have an idea what one part per
billion is think of a pancake stack four
thousand miles high one pancake in that
stack is one part per billion so a small
amount can have a huge effect think
events in the womb don’t stay in the
womb I apologize it’s almost lunch the
inside of a mouse that’s a control mouse
in an experiment it’s a healthy Mouse
it’s got good kidneys fully functional
it’s got a small small bladder what
would happen have happened it had that
Mouse in the womb been exposed to 20
parts per billion of BPA its kidneys
have gone comply this these two mice are
my age in Mouse ears long after the
exposures took place in the womb it’s
blood the kidneys have gone to chronic
bladder is about to explode had it been
left alive for the few more days the
bladder would have exploded so what
happened so you’ve got a bladder and
you’ve got the outside world
dude you Reeth row is the tube through
which you pee mice do it we do it that
urethra has some tissue a special tissue
that responds to BPA when the exposure
takes place in the womb so that as the
mouse ages that tube constricts until
the animal can no longer pee and that’s
the result events in the womb can be
manifest much later in life with very
little indication what’s going on in
between this is another experiment with
my sis when done by the National
Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences it’s the same strain of mice
they track their caloric intakes and
activity levels from birth to this point
which is midlife and what you can see is
that one of them is morbidly obese it’s
clearly not couch potatoes or gluttony
involved what was involved well the
morbidly obese Mouse was exposed to one
part per billion at birth to a potent
endocrine disrupting compound and it
changed as the animal grew how many fat
cells it had in its body more fat cells
greater risk for obesity so here’s the
question and and this this goes right to
the point of the flawed assumptions used
by FDA and EPA today what would have
happened if the experimental Mouse had
been exposed to a thousand parts per
billion instead of one one produced
morbid obesity would a thousand produce
an explosion actually if you’re a
toxicologist at the EPA you turn to a
dictum developed in the 1600s by a man
named Paracelsus which says the dose
makes the poison the bigger the dose the
bigger the effect that would predict an
explosion in fact what happens is the
mouse exposed to a thousand parts per
billion loses weight compared to the
control animal exactly the opposite of
what
every regulatory Asst test for safety
has ever assumed hormones and endocrine
disrupting compounds have one suite of
effects at high doses and another suite
of effects at low doses and you can’t
predict one from the other and yet all
regulatory testing tests in the high
dose range waits and does a series of
tests down the doses until there’s no
differs between control and experimental
and that says ha we found where it’s
safe
they never test in the low dose range
this is a deep flaw in every regulatory
test that’s been done on the planet by
regulatory agencies has been driven by
that completely false assumption another
assumption as shoppers we assume that
the products in the market have been
tested for safety period not even even
by flawed methods well unfortunately the
vast majority of chemicals that are used
in products today have never been tested
at all and that’s because of the way the
law was structured in 1976 toxic
substance Control Act where they looked
at tens of thousands of chemicals and
they said well we don’t see any dead
bodies they used the toxicology of
the 1970s to ask do we see any problems
and they said no so let’s just
grandfather among them all in we’re
gonna let people use them without any
further testing and that’s what happened
tens of thousands of chemicals are on
the market today because they were
grandfathered in in 1976 I’ll give you
one example of how dangerous that
assumption has proven to be this is doc
tail salt sodium sulfur succinate it’s a
product using laxatives in in the US and
elsewhere is taken by pregnant women
during pregnancy scientists using
today’s toxicology to toxicology of
endocrine disruptions discovered that
the that that that compound do SS is an
obese agent it makes exposed individuals
become fatter a significant percentage
of pregnant women in the u.s. today are
taking this during pregnancy this may be
something maybe because the science is
done yet but may be contributing today’s
current obesity crisis so there are
things that we can do as individuals we
can make personal lifestyle choices
about what to expose ourselves and what
not to if we know what to what’s what’s
out there and what’s dangerous
unfortunately moms should not have to be
chemical engineers to go shopping for
their kids but that’s what the system
forces them to do today what this book
does is is say if you know something
about this you can reduce your exposures
or you can increase your exposures and
not only is this there’s this book which
is humorous there are many studies
published in the scientific literature
which show the same thing you can make
choices that reduce your exposures there
are other things that need to happen you
know the old dictum reduce reuse recycle
well I’ve been working and there are
other there are lots of people working
on the 4th R which is redesign we have
enough information now out of this
scientific research from on endocrine
disruption over the last 20 years to
know how to design new chemicals that do
not create this hazard and you know what
there’s a market for that out there you
you are driving companies to make
choices about avoiding hazardous
materials in the product that they sell
you it’s not done yet but look at think
about BPA and the fact you go into any
market that sells bottles like this
today they’re labeled bpa-free it’s not
by accident it’s because you’re paying
those company APRI manie’s a premium to
provide you with safer materials so we
have the knowledge today to introduce a
new generation of materials that are
inherently safer you are rewarding
companies that do that Target Walmart
Costco Home Depot have all been sending
lists to their suppliers saying enough
already get that stuff out of out of our
the things that we’re buying you so I
thank you for contributing to trying to
the path to solve this problem we can do
this we have the science that is
sufficient to solve this problem today
and when we use that science not or not
only are we going to make people
healthier but we’re gonna make vampire
blood safe again thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
so in the spirit of Halloween
let’s make vampire blood safe for
vampires again what why would you do
that well if you think about it
vampires are at the top of the food
chain they drink human blood
unfortunately because of design errors
and ignorance there are thousands
hundreds if not thousands of synthetic
organic chemicals that have never been
part of human body chemistry in that
blood and they are linked by serious
science has come out over the last 20
years to a range of today’s epidemics of
chronic diseases so if we can make
vampire foods safe for vampires again by
reducing exposures we can make people
healthier this is a list a partial list
of the epidemics that we are facing
today things like breast cancer prostate
cancer diabetes obesity autism these
have increased dramatically over the
20th and 21st centuries shocking numbers
in 1975 that one in 5,000 boys developed
autism today it’s one in 50
that’s a hundredfold increase that does
not bode well for our grandchildren and
what we know from this science is that
while all of these factors are multi all
these diseases are multifactorial
chemical contamination contributes some
part of that body burden of that of that
disease burden and what that does is
give us an opportunity to improve human
health by
acting on the science that we know today
I am confident that virtually everyone
in this room through family and friends
has suffered from one or more of these
conditions we can change that and if we
change that if we reduce the exposures
then not only do we improve human health
but we make that blood safe again for
vampires
so how did that fetus get to there from
a fertilized egg and how does it get
from there to a fully functional healthy
adult
well hormones guide gene expression they
guide the turning on and turning off of
genes which occurs throughout our
lifetimes trillions at times a second
it’s the symphony of life endocrine
disrupting compounds EDC’s hack that
system sometimes they turn genes off
when we need them sometimes they turn
the wrong genes on at the wrong time and
when changes when hacking like that
happens to the hormone system you wind
up at risk to some of those epidemics
it’s a problem how are we exposed to
things like this well many industrial
chemicals that are produced through the
process of petroleum distillation have
endocrine disrupting characteristics
things like bisphenol A which you
probably all know of as BPA and the
phthalates that Richard mentioned these
are problematic chemicals they interfere
with hormone action pesticides
pesticides get into conventional food as
and in direct our kitchens they’re also
sprayed they’re picked up and missed
they’re spread into those houses near
that helicopter spraying pesticides and
lastly they evaporate in the heat of the
Sun they volatilize they go into the
clouds they get into the raindrops and
they can be rained down on land several
hundred kilometres away
Nick Kristof the New York Times Colman’s
wrote about this this past week and I’ll
paraphrase what he said there we’ve done
a really good job at lowering
contamination in the outer world in the
air and the water of the rivers we have
done a terrible job at eliminating
contamination in the inner world
especially of the developing fetus and
the brain and that’s underlying a lot of
these problems so how do those things
get into us we bring them into our homes
we we don’t question the safety of
conventional produce we don’t understand
that farmed salmon have persistent
organic pollutants in them at high
levels we use pesticides freely we use
personal care products which
surprisingly contain things like salads
things as simple as a couch and as
complicated as a computer have-have
brominated flame retardants in them
which leach leak out of the those those
that equipment and the couch enter the
dust get on your floor and then are
picked up in the hands of a toddler
who’s crawling and put into the mouth
something as banal as thermal paper
receipts which we handle every day when
we grab the receipt at the gas station
or at the ATM those are coated in dust
with BPA and every time you handle one
it’s transferred to your skin and it
penetrates and gets into your
bloodstream cooking utensils some not
all but some are made out of materials
that leach endocrine disrupting
compounds also and then there’s food
packaging equipment materials plastics
that stuff the plastics in those
materials leach into the food with which
it comes into contact especially if it’s
heated so let me give you a hint don’t
microwave in plastic it’s just a bad
idea
this science of endocrine disruption has
undergone a revolution over the last 20
years and I’m gonna summarize three
pillars of that science for you
things that completely change how we
think about the consequences of that
stuff we’re bringing into our homes
every day first low doses matter a lot
we used to think only high doses matter
low doses matter and I’ll give you an
example
second events in the womb don’t stay in
the womb it fetal exposures can lead to
problems much later in life third how we
assess safety how the FDA and the EPA
assess safety are based on profoundly
flawed assumptions they’re getting it
wrong
today so low doses matter a lot – frogs
mating what you don’t know about that
picture is that the lower frog is the
brother of the upper frog and exposure
to a pesticide at 2.5 parts per billion
when it was a tadpole let it to grow up
as a fully functional female capable of
growing of laying eggs that can be
fertilized capable of having those
fertilized eggs grow up into adults and
then reproduce the next generation the
pesticide is atrazine a commonly used
herbicide in the Midwest 2.5 parts per
billion low amounts matter what is that
anyone have an idea what one part per
billion is think of a pancake stack four
thousand miles high one pancake in that
stack is one part per billion so a small
amount can have a huge effect think
events in the womb don’t stay in the
womb I apologize it’s almost lunch the
inside of a mouse that’s a control mouse
in an experiment it’s a healthy Mouse
it’s got good kidneys fully functional
it’s got a small small bladder what
would happen have happened it had that
Mouse in the womb been exposed to 20
parts per billion of BPA its kidneys
have gone comply this these two mice are
my age in Mouse ears long after the
exposures took place in the womb it’s
blood the kidneys have gone to chronic
bladder is about to explode had it been
left alive for the few more days the
bladder would have exploded so what
happened so you’ve got a bladder and
you’ve got the outside world
dude you Reeth row is the tube through
which you pee mice do it we do it that
urethra has some tissue a special tissue
that responds to BPA when the exposure
takes place in the womb so that as the
mouse ages that tube constricts until
the animal can no longer pee and that’s
the result events in the womb can be
manifest much later in life with very
little indication what’s going on in
between this is another experiment with
my sis when done by the National
Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences it’s the same strain of mice
they track their caloric intakes and
activity levels from birth to this point
which is midlife and what you can see is
that one of them is morbidly obese it’s
clearly not couch potatoes or gluttony
involved what was involved well the
morbidly obese Mouse was exposed to one
part per billion at birth to a potent
endocrine disrupting compound and it
changed as the animal grew how many fat
cells it had in its body more fat cells
greater risk for obesity so here’s the
question and and this this goes right to
the point of the flawed assumptions used
by FDA and EPA today what would have
happened if the experimental Mouse had
been exposed to a thousand parts per
billion instead of one one produced
morbid obesity would a thousand produce
an explosion actually if you’re a
toxicologist at the EPA you turn to a
dictum developed in the 1600s by a man
named Paracelsus which says the dose
makes the poison the bigger the dose the
bigger the effect that would predict an
explosion in fact what happens is the
mouse exposed to a thousand parts per
billion loses weight compared to the
control animal exactly the opposite of
what
every regulatory Asst test for safety
has ever assumed hormones and endocrine
disrupting compounds have one suite of
effects at high doses and another suite
of effects at low doses and you can’t
predict one from the other and yet all
regulatory testing tests in the high
dose range waits and does a series of
tests down the doses until there’s no
differs between control and experimental
and that says ha we found where it’s
safe
they never test in the low dose range
this is a deep flaw in every regulatory
test that’s been done on the planet by
regulatory agencies has been driven by
that completely false assumption another
assumption as shoppers we assume that
the products in the market have been
tested for safety period not even even
by flawed methods well unfortunately the
vast majority of chemicals that are used
in products today have never been tested
at all and that’s because of the way the
law was structured in 1976 toxic
substance Control Act where they looked
at tens of thousands of chemicals and
they said well we don’t see any dead
bodies they used the toxicology of
the 1970s to ask do we see any problems
and they said no so let’s just
grandfather among them all in we’re
gonna let people use them without any
further testing and that’s what happened
tens of thousands of chemicals are on
the market today because they were
grandfathered in in 1976 I’ll give you
one example of how dangerous that
assumption has proven to be this is doc
tail salt sodium sulfur succinate it’s a
product using laxatives in in the US and
elsewhere is taken by pregnant women
during pregnancy scientists using
today’s toxicology to toxicology of
endocrine disruptions discovered that
the that that that compound do SS is an
obese agent it makes exposed individuals
become fatter a significant percentage
of pregnant women in the u.s. today are
taking this during pregnancy this may be
something maybe because the science is
done yet but may be contributing today’s
current obesity crisis so there are
things that we can do as individuals we
can make personal lifestyle choices
about what to expose ourselves and what
not to if we know what to what’s what’s
out there and what’s dangerous
unfortunately moms should not have to be
chemical engineers to go shopping for
their kids but that’s what the system
forces them to do today what this book
does is is say if you know something
about this you can reduce your exposures
or you can increase your exposures and
not only is this there’s this book which
is humorous there are many studies
published in the scientific literature
which show the same thing you can make
choices that reduce your exposures there
are other things that need to happen you
know the old dictum reduce reuse recycle
well I’ve been working and there are
other there are lots of people working
on the 4th R which is redesign we have
enough information now out of this
scientific research from on endocrine
disruption over the last 20 years to
know how to design new chemicals that do
not create this hazard and you know what
there’s a market for that out there you
you are driving companies to make
choices about avoiding hazardous
materials in the product that they sell
you it’s not done yet but look at think
about BPA and the fact you go into any
market that sells bottles like this
today they’re labeled bpa-free it’s not
by accident it’s because you’re paying
those company APRI manie’s a premium to
provide you with safer materials so we
have the knowledge today to introduce a
new generation of materials that are
inherently safer you are rewarding
companies that do that Target Walmart
Costco Home Depot have all been sending
lists to their suppliers saying enough
already get that stuff out of out of our
the things that we’re buying you so I
thank you for contributing to trying to
the path to solve this problem we can do
this we have the science that is
sufficient to solve this problem today
and when we use that science not or not
only are we going to make people
healthier but we’re gonna make vampire
blood safe again thank you
[Applause]
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