The Smart Human with Dr. Aly Cohen Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals with Co-author for "Non-Toxic"
Resources/Links:
In this interview, Dr. Cohen interviews Dr. Frederick vom Saal, her co-editor and writing partner for both the Oxford University Press textbook, "Integrative Environmental Medicine", published in 2017, and now their new collaboration, "Non-Toxic: Guide to Living Healthy in a Chemical World", available now! Aly and Fred discuss how they became writing partners, what it was like to work on two intense writing projects together, Fred's history as a renowned researcher in endocrine disruption, key issues in environmental health, and future projects!
Dr. Fred vom Saal is a Curators' Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. After college he taught biology as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Somalia and after the revolution there, he also taught in Kenya and then Paris before entering graduate school. Dr. vom Saal has published over 240 articles and reviews on his research. His research is largely responsible for having bisphenol A (BPA) removed from plastic baby bottles from the U.S. market in 2012. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous scientific journals and federal research review panels both in the United States and abroad.
Dr. Fred vom Saal is a Curators' Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Missouri- Columbia (MU). After college he taught biology as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Somalia and after the revolution there, he also taught in Kenya and then Paris before entering graduate school. Fred has mentored numerous undergraduate and graduate students since joining the MU faculty in 1979, and has published over 240 articles and reviews on his research, which has been funded by grants from NIH, NSF, USDA, EPA, FDA and NATO, as well as a number of foundations and MU. In the mid- 1990s, he and his colleagues at MU discovered that the endocrine disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) disrupted fetal development at doses thousands of times lower than had been estimated to cause no effect by the FDA and EPA. He served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Hormonally Active Agents in the Environment, is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is a recipient of the Heinz Foundation Award in Environmental Science, the Upstream Award from the Jenifer Altman Foundation, the Environmental Health Hero Award from the CleanMed Association, and is a recipient of the University of Missouri Alumni Association Faculty Award. He has served on numerous editorial boards of scientific journals and federal research review panels both in the U.S. and abroad. Because his research has challenged the approaches used by regulatory agencies to assess chemical safety, he has testified about the hazards posed by environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals in numerous state legislatures, the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, and the EU Parliament, and he has been invited to lecture throughout the world. Fred, together with his wife Kathi, enjoys flying around the U.S. and Canada in their airplane, and particularly visiting their families and grandson Charlie.