EHP : The Researcher's Perspective

Cities and states across the United States, as well as other nations abroad, are banning bisphenol A (BPA) due to concerns about adverse health effects of low doses of this widely used industrial compound, particularly among fetuses, infants, and young children. In this podcast, Retha Newbold describes the findings of one of the few studies to study long-term effects of prenatal exposure to BPA in mice. Newbold is a staff scientist/reproductive biologist in the NIEHS Toxicology Branch and the lead author of "Prenatal exposure to bisphenol A at environmentally relevant doses adversely affects the murine female reproductive tract later in life" [EHP 117:879-885 (2009)].

In 2005 Shanna Swan and colleagues published groundbreaking research [EHP 113:1056-1061 (2005)] linking mothers' phthalate levels with altered genital development in their baby sons. In the four years since the publication of this paper, which was EHP's 2009 Paper of the Year, how much more have we learned about the health effects of phthalates? In this podcast, Swan discusses the state of the science. Swan is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and of environmental medicine at New York's University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, where she is also director of the Center for Reproductive Epidemiology.

Children are generally more vulnerable to environmental insults because their bodies are still developing, but just as early exposures can cause lifelong adverse effects, so can early interventions produce lifelong benefits. In this podcast, Frederica Perera discusses the potential long-term benefits of reducing children's exposures to combustion emissions by mitigating modern society's reliance on fossil fuels. Perera is director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, at Columbia University in New York and the author of "Children are likely to suffer most from our fossil fuel addiction" [EHP 116:987-990 (2008)].

In 2004 Günter Oberdörster and colleagues published a seminal review on the emerging discipline of nanotoxicology, which was later selected as EHP's 2008 Paper of the Year [EHP 113:823-839 (2005)]. In this podcast, Oberdörster tells why nanomaterials are so different from their larger chemical counterparts and describes the growing use of these materials in consumer products. Oberdörster is a professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine at the University of Rochester, New York, and director of the University of Rochester Ultrafine Particle Center.

In January 2009 Linda Birnbaum took the reins as the new director of NIEHS and the National Toxicology Program. In this podcast, Birnbaum shares her thoughts on the challenges facing the NIEHS and how she sees the institute meeting those challenges. Prior to her appointment as NIEHS/NTP director, Birnbaum was director of the Experimental Toxicology Division of the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

How do you visualize something you've never seen? That's the question facing policy makers who are charged with preparing for the potential public health effects of a warming climate. In this podcast, Kristie Ebi looks at various scenarios used to power models that predict effects of climate change. Ebi is the author of "Climate change, tropospheric ozone and particulate matter, and health impacts" [EHP 116:1449-1455 (2008)] and an independent consultant who has served on numerous scientific panels including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.