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I'm Sue Schantz.
I'm a neurotoxicologist. I guess my background is fairly unique and that I'm
trained in neuroscience and toxicology.
I'm interested in public health and
prenatal exposure to chemicals and how that affects the development of the brain.
There are thousands of chemicals out there. Most of them we have no idea how
they're affecting human health.
And, even if we do know something about human health,
we rarely know enough about how they affect neurodevelopment in particular.
There's much more information about chemical X or Y causes cancer,
or effects other health outcomes.
So it's really an area that needs addressing.
Of course the fetus is very sensitive. It's a sensitive period for exposure.
So understanding how chemicals that we might be exposed to in the home
environment, or in the environment more broadly, and the impact those could
have on development is important.
We've all heard of lead. We know that lead is bad. Now lead is back in the news big time,
because of what happened in Flint, Michigan. But most people don't know very
much beyond that. And there's so many other chemicals out there. Some we
already know are bad actors. Most of them we don't we don't know because there
just hasn't been the research. We're interested in chemicals that are in
consumer products. So they're present throughout the home. We're looking at the
phenols and phthalates. So they're in food packaging and they're in personal
care products and cleaning products. And some of them are found in food.
So they are things that women are exposed to every day on a regular basis during pregnancy.
So we'll measure actual exposure from the urine sample that we get.
And we'll have actual concentrations of chemicals that we can correlate with
health outcomes in her child later on.
[Lindsey] Having a baby is kind of an involved process. And so I've gotten very used to
peeing in a cup. Every doctor's appointment you have to give urine.
So this hasn't been particularly hard to do as a study. And it's been interesting to
be more aware of the things that I'm getting exposed to.
[Schantz] One class of chemicals we're studying called phthalates are actually anti-androgenic.
In animal studies it's been shown that phthalate exposure reduces the production of testosterone.
And the sex steroid hormones are actually really important in brain development.
And exposure to those steroid hormones in the prenatal period actually,
kind of drives the direction of the brain in a male or female pattern.
And, even as young as four to five months of age,
you can see differences and how males and females understand and look at the
world and solve problems.
So some of the tasks we're using are trying to see if these endocrine
disrupting chemicals might be disrupting the normal male and female differences
in cognitive function.
In the studies that we're doing now, we're looking at really young babies,
which is very exciting for us.
But they can't just tell us what they know.
So we have to be creative and how we can figure out what they do.
So, in babies, we use looking behavior.
So we'll show them stimuli and then we'll record how long they look at things.
And, because we're using eye-tracking, we can get very precise
information about where the baby is looking.
So we can look at whether chemicals disrupt that.
[Molly] So before i was involved in the research study,
you know, you think about your baby's development and the things that you eat
and the things that you use.
I didn't think about that as much with my first pregnancy.
But, in the second pregnancy, going through the questionnaires that they have, has made me
think about that stuff. And wanting to be healthier during the pregnancy.
And then using healthy products for her as well.
[Schantz] Bisphenol A, or BPA, is one that's been researched quite a bit now.
And we're starting to understand that there are risks.
And people have been clamoring for BPA-free products.
So it's being taken out of a lot of products; especially baby products.
But it's being replaced by other things...
BPS and BPF, which are very similar in structure and could have similar toxic effects.
So usually there's a good reason for the thing to be in the product.
The problem is that their toxicity is not necessarily studied before they are put in products;
or are not studied enough.
So our research is evolving and we're trying to look at these new chemicals that are coming on
the market as well to see what their effects are.
I'm a member of this committee that formed close to two years ago, called Project TENDR.
Which is... Targeting Environmental Neurodevelopmental Risk
And we're really interested in trying to move policy in a good direction in terms
of protecting children's neurodevelopment.
There many, many chemicals that are concerned.
And we can't focus on everything.
So we identified a subset of chemicals that we highlight that we know there's strong
evidence that these are affecting children's neurodevelopment --
and mentioned others that are probably a concern.
The number of chemicals that are out there is kind of mind-boggling.
And how little we know about them is equally mind-boggling.
We live in a chemical soup.
And we don't know what the impact of most of those chemicals are having on
our children's health, and especially on their neurodevelopment.
And that's what our center is about... is to try to determine whether some of these other
chemicals, that haven't been as extensively studied, are having ill effects.
So we're hoping that the research that we do will ultimately help to protect children's health.
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