26: How The Food We Eat Impacts Our Health With Linda Birnbaum

You might think buying and eating organic food is good for you, which it is. But, what happens then if that organic product is put in a plastic container?

In today's episode, we are joined by Linda Birnbaum, the recently retired director of NIEHS, an institute dedicated to learning more about how the environment affects our health. In our conversation, Linda explains how the environment affects the food that we eat in various ways. She explains how fish has mercury from their food, or how organic food will affect us when placed in plastic containers.

In this Episode, We Discuss:

• A Summary of Linda Birnbaum’s Presentation from the UNWRAPPED Conference
• How our Environment affects the food that we eat
• BPA, BPS, BPAF
• Contamination in the environment
• Do we really need these chemicals or not

Get to know Linda Birnbaum:

Linda is the first board-certified toxicologist and the first woman to serve as Director of the NIEHS, which has a unique research mission to discover how the environment affects people’s health in order to promote healthier lives.

Under Linda’s leadership, the NIEHS became a world leader in toxicology and environmental health research, with NIEHS science inspiring health policy and safety standards in the United States and abroad. Scientific reports generated by the NTP, such as the bi-annual Report on Carcinogens, serve as major presentations of scientific analyses of substances in our environment that may cause cancer. The NIEHS also established a national network of exposure assessment laboratories with an innovative grant program called Children’s Health Exposure Analysis Resource. Research conducted by the NIEHS Children’s Centers cosponsored with the EPA, and related work with environmental justice communities has led to policy changes to protect the health of children through improvements in their environments.

To know more about the Unwrapped conference, please visit their website here.

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I hope you spend some time in nature today! I'll catch you next time.

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