You Make Me Sick

Hurricane Harvey tore through the Houston region in August 2017, dumping torrential rains, damaging homes and businesses, and upending people’s lives. In this episode, we talked with Dr. Elena Craft, a senior scientist at EDF, about another aspect of the storm’s devastation: toxic chemical releases.

What is it like to be in space? Space travel certainly comes with sweeping views of Earth and the prospect of otherworldly exploration, but it also takes a significant toll on the human body. In this episode, UC Boulder professor Dr. Allie Anderson talks about the health challenges presented by spaceflight and what the future of space medicine looks like.

A changing climate poses clear threats to the environment and global ecosystems, but it also presents risks to human health. In this episode we talked with University of Colorado physicians Jay Lemery and Cecilia Sorensen about how climate change can harm our health and how the medical community must adapt to this new driver of disease.

We all know clean air means better health. What if we could know how much air pollution we encounter during our daily routines? On this episode we chatted with UT Austin professor Joshua Apte about a cool new project launched by EDF and Google to map air pollution at very fine scales using Google Street View cars outfitted with air quality sensors. Dr. Apte shares the project’s early results and what they mean for public health.

The air in and around coal mines is full of tiny mineral particles created during the mining process. Inhaling too much of this air can cause what’s called coal workers’ pneumoconiosis – better known as black lung disease. For a while, greater awareness and improved mining conditions led the number of cases to drop, but that trend has reversed in recent years. We talked with Dr. Edward Petsonk of West Virginia University about the resurgence of black lung disease and the impact that this illness has on miners and local mining communities.

Our first interview was with Dr. Bruce Lanphear, a professor at Simon Fraser University with expertise in children’s environmental health. His research ranges from childhood exposures to pesticides, mercury, tobacco smoke and other chemicals of concern. In this episode, we sat down with him in the EDF Washington office to learn specifically about how lead exposure affects children.

We have over 200 different cell types with the same exact DNA, but that look and function totally differently. Think heart cell versus brain cell. This biological feat is accomplished through epigenetics – molecular marks on our DNA that tell our genes when to turn on and off. These marks can be altered by everything from the food we eat to the stress we experience. We talked with Dr. Dana Dolinoy of the University of Michigan to discuss the exciting and emerging world of epigenetics.

If people of color make up over 35% of the US population, why are they only in 14% of the senior staff positions of environmental organizations? We sat down with Whitney Tome, Executive Director of Green 2.0, to talk about diversity, hiring practices, and their new report, Beyond Diversity.

In today’s episode, journalist and advocate Richard Louv discusses the health effects of green spaces, the need to design nature rich lives, and the future of environmentalism.

In today’s episode, Dr. Ami Zota from the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health discusses how certain chemicals associated with plastics show up in people’s urine after they eat fast food.

What happens when salmon in the Puget Sound get exposed to cocaine, lipid control medicines, and anti-depressants? We called Dr. James Meador from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency to find out!

On this episode, we talked with Dr. Brett Finlay, author of “Let Them Eat Dirt”, about the fascinating world of microbes. Dr. Finlay’s research focuses on how bacteria and other tiny microorganisms living in and on us might not be all bad. In this episode, we caught up with him in New York City to learn about fecal transplants and asthma, and to get some new evidence in the never-ending dogs vs. cats debate.