November 25, 2012 Chemical "soup" clouds connection between
toxins and poor health From plastics to flame retardants, the
ubiquitous chemicals of our daily lives have raised public
health concerns like never before. Inside the Beltway, however,
data-crunching scientists are often no match for industry
lobbyists and corporate lawyers. The exception, no doubt, is
Linda Birnbaum, the toxicologist who leads, two little-known
scientific agencies, the National Institute of Environmental
Health Services (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Program
(NTP). Scientific American sat down with Birnbaum in Washington,
D.C., to learn more about environmental health, toxic chemistry
and the politics of chemical regulation. How much of human
disease is due to environmental exposures? The estimates vary,
and it depends on how you define environment. People often say
it's about 30 percent. I think that's defining environment
fairly narrowly, considering only environmental chemical
exposures, but your environment includes the foo