here so to begin with tell us a little bit about your background how you got into medicine and what you did ok you have a couple hours so why actually really grew up in a in a in a physician family in a doctor's family and it was really wonderful and i kind of had the sort of natural direction to go to a specialty which i did which is rheumatology and then i kind of evolved into sort of a holistic approach with integrative medicine and that's a study of how to thinking about other things other than great medicines for solving topic and then it kind of led into some more interesting aspects of human health and how the environment really does affect human health believe it or not my dog had passed away about seven years ago and as i was researching what might have caused his very unusual and very young death as i was looking at his potential environmental risks and what he might have been exposed to including farmland we live on and dog food in certain ways  i realized that there was very little regulation in terms of human products human air quality or water quality you know you know just a variety of topics came up in really managing that situation then i realized that we really is as humans have to know what's going on in in our environment how affects health but also what are the regulations what what is the legislation that's in place to protect us and how can we better arm ourselves phone use so i research all that and try to figure out how to give that to the public what exactly is environmental health those are great questions so the way i kind of summarize it is really how again how the environment really does play a role in human health so you know what does the pollution or clean air status really mean to people in terms of asthma or c o p d or emphysema people who have longstanding history of one disease  but also pregnant women and what does the exposure to polluted air really do to development in children in the fetus and what are their long term there pre term delivery or obesity quantity of air that they breathe in on it minute by minute basis you know for their square their by surface area really is very different than an adult and also children are rapidly growing as as  teens which gets me to the point of prince high school yet their program that we put together that those times where there's really rapid growth and sell turnovers when we're most vulnerable for those exposures to have an effect interest and so a lot of the work that you do is educating people about about those out to be healthier at least in the environment exactly exactly and giving them tools i think it's one thing to sort of tell people everything is sort of doom and gloom and it's an enormous topic i mean it's taken me years and i'm still working through it that work in progress but i layer on these topics and i layer on the research and i come up with the best aspects of how to manage these issues within our control  started you know the website the smart human facebook page the smart human what are instagram and my goal with that is to really bring the silos of science and all of the bench researchers research that's really is available  to the everyday person who walks into you know a big box store and with the pics on screen and doesn't really know which ones safe and which ones not is the marketing real or is it fake how much does the word organic actually mean versus natural so i i feel that you know since all this exists all this data exist it just has to be put in a format that's really relatable to everyday people and that's why i started the smart human so people could get you know post three times a week on facebook and check out different articles on the web site now tell me what interested you because you're doing a series at the high school prince and i handle a six week series on environmental health and teaching about this what interested you in teaching teenagers about environmental i think in this high school you know well to be honest with you in short you know i spent the better half of two and a half years working with a big group it's nonprofit in washington d c called the environmental working group some people know org they do a dirty dozen clean fifteen cody's yarrow do so right actually and that's really done really great things for the public in terms of awareness on pesticides and pesticide residues so i worked with them for about two and a half or so three years and we put together a very you know high brow educational evidence based program for physicians around the country and i did a lot of running around and different medical departments and a tautology internal medicine family medicine and gynecology and you know my experience was such that i didn't feel the doctors were really grasping or really taking seriously what i was talking about and i also felt that they also had a lot on their plate as well in terms of very basic very basic health and wellness instruction you know what to eat and how to take their medicines so i realize it was a little bit frustrating and i started to think having babysitters you know hanging out with my kids and discussing it with them that really the population that would be most i would say i would hope benefit from this information but also you know teenagers are enormously receptive to new information they are very  know how to get apps and you know work on different websites and apple or even tools for choosing better products they are very body aware so they're in the midst of figuring out who they are what they want to do in their lives you know who they want to be with who they want to be they're actually taking ownership exactly where they really want to figure things out side what they think about right and they're at such a great age because they don't have any response to he's necessarily to anyone but themselves very kind of selfish happily selfish time period actually but they can also move the market teenagers you know it's a the millennial they have a huge opportunity to move the market in a way that's very safe that's making products that are healthy for people more visible  and so they're really the up and coming future of what i'm hoping to get across in in this country but you know in addition you know one day they're going to get pregnant potentially that's what they choose and male or female and they're going to want to think about some of the things they learned in the past about how their bodies are exposed and maybe put some thought into how they want to handle their choices as they grow a fetus and want to become pregnant and have a healthy healthy child so you know it's all the perfect fodder for a really good program if i can really pull this off how's it going so far you've been a couple weeks in the what's it been like teaching high schoolers about the rest it's interesting so i and my experience back then i think i was a little more nervous about what i wore and i hope i don't look like that or going i really want to be cool and you felt like you're back in high school i felt like i was back in high school it was the funniest thing and then it's it's funny because this time around having collected data back then and now trying to collect data in order to sort of you know formulate how i'm going to make this program into a national program i was still couldn't sleep the night before didn't know what to wear it was like you know back to high school back to two years ago and so i realize that i'm just going to have to deal with that nervousness is since gone very well we've had three lectures the first lecture was on cellular technology and how to use our safe gadgets i mean our get our tech gadgets safely the second lecture was a particular favorite of mine because i'm very you know i feel very strongly about clean water not just you know getting it from lakes and streams and you know our task but also really deciding between plastic water bottles what to carry it in what kind of filtration what do we need to expect or what to think about with clean water or you know whether water you know so there's different aspects different parts of the country and then we just had a lecture on wednesday on air quality went through all the physiology of the lung and really try to help them embrace why clean air is so important and what are our issues as we move forward in a very modern society with lots of manufacturing and and really had a think about air quality in their home as well as  in the work space and outside next week is personal care products another favorite of mine so we're going to we're going to vet out different products that the kids like and have them look through their own personal care products and  decide for themselves it's really not up to me it's really give them the information and let them decide you know what's right for themselves and that's so important for anyone really can really be directed on what is good information what isn't good information and  they're not branded in endorsed and random way that sends people down the wrong path so i try very hard i'm not always perfect at it but i'm certainly trying to keep it as you know free of any commercial bias is possible that people really make decisions was like what they thought about the right well the topic was you know we had a catchy topic about how to protect your sperm and other you know important bodily parts hoping to grab more kids come in and in fact there's truth to that because you know we are in a modern world where we love our stuff we love our tech stuff and you know it's one thing to say you know get rid of everything and don't use it and live like a hermit but it's really you know it's not going to get very far that messaging so what i'm trying to do is actually talk to kids and adults and my medical colleagues to share with patients that we really want to just use these technologies carefully you know there are issues with putting cell phones close to the body in fact if you look at every single cell phone there is a legal section when you scroll through certain i have them do this on their phone where they go through they're all going to run through the fine print is actually on the phone because what they fax say is to keep it at least five millimeters away from the body unfortunately a lot of people are throwing these in their pockets this throwing out and lose their bras which is actually very concerning as there's now concern over new breast cancer cases from women teens who actually carry their cellphones in their bras and young men who put them in their front pocket and so there's questions questions it's really a lot of data that sperm quality sperm count and mobility d n a is damaged and so you know maybe that's contributing to a ris infertility monks americans in north american but also laptops you know they're acting as antennas so these so i'm trying to give folks an idea that when you don't need your cell phone please turn it off it's not necessary to have it on all the time airplane mode next to your bed is much more you know much safer than to leave it on with an antenna with you know ready to go humming it's constant and constant signaling so we just don't need to have that around this all the time there's certainly controversy amongst you know young people in in the guard and preschool where they're now bringing in some of this technology why fi and i pads and you know it is a little concerning considering what the data is showing what the students  lecture it was very interesting to so you know the boys were goofing off and kind of making note of where to put their cell phone and you know putting in their back pockets because i said if you're going to put it anywhere just at least give yourself some distance from some of the more vulnerable parts and young girls too but at you know i got the sense that they heard that message and i even had a young girl in the class ask me about her earpiece because she had some sort of hearing and she wanted to know if there was any technology that streams live music to the use your piece i thought was really in question and so i did feel that people were opening their minds and trying to figure out how to manage their desire for streaming music to you know to their ear piece to you know but also balancing it with you know understanding that there are some there potentially some health issues that's the flip side you know there's sort of a health aspect of taking a break from technology you know we're also conflicts like the absolute like them too we talked about you know texting and driving and sort of the abs aspects that are more about distraction and stress and screen time and when the light does to the brain and how it's kind of makes you constantly feel that you're awake because the brain responds to light actually at night so you know there's issues with time sleep you know obviously teenagers don't get a lot of sleep but it turns out technology doesn't help right so yeah we covered some of that as well and i think the kids were validated in probably what they already knew yes the second week you talked about drinking water this has been an international is a lot lately what did you tell them about drinking water was there anything that you really think is sort of an unknown you know that we sort of gloss over and you can so i did a couple experiments with the kids that i actually kind of thought of as i was driving to the to the lecture but you know i had to to glass bottled plastic bottled waters and they both had flavoring in them and one of them i actually put half a cup of salt in it and kind of dissolved it and i let them smell and they smelled the water and i said listen you can smell you know there's some ingredient there that's probably an artificial flavor right but one of them has salts and a half a cup of it and you can't smell it and i wanted them to really think about the fact that you don't always have to know or taste or see a contaminant in drinking water and just by understanding that i think they could think that you know perhaps we should be more thoughtful about where we get our water because most people don't really understand that there are risks there's no perfect system right but say bottled water has its risks because of the plastics in the plasticizers that can act like low level estrogen  and then tap water has as much as we have reasonable regulation there's only ninety one chemicals covered nationally by the safe drinking water act but even the best treatment plan in the country really only manages ninety one chemical we have eighty seven thousand available in the commercial market that end up in bodies of water they come are drinking water so i wanted people to think about filtration i wanted to think about the sports bottles they carry their water in and understand that b p a free usually doesn't always mean the p s three b p f p free and all these regrettable substitutions that are now being used and that some of the best ways to carry water are the materials that don't break down like stainless steel  and not having a flip top plastic top because it kind of defeats the purpose so but yeah i do believe in going back to more sustainable harder surface you know products that you know don't break down with heat it don't you know break down with different scratching they would be laughing because you know no one could have a more horrible diet and lifestyle it's a process and when people realize that they should be shamed for it that it's not something they knew when you don't know you don't know how do you know make the indoor air quality can be just as toxic and if not even more in many cases than outdoor air is that stagnant sense of it's sort of enclosed building and exactly where we were so much more energy efficient than we've ever been to save money on energy bills and the problem with that is that we don't have any airflow anymore so all of the products that we live with all of these synthetic materials you know carpeting vinyl flooring you know flame retardant chemicals that are in padding of couches pesticides or insecticides that people spray perfumed all of those chemicals from cleaning products and any number of other chemicals inside the home air fresheners they all collect and they either end up as dust or they remain in the air that we breathe indoors and people don't often open windows especially in seasons like winter when when it's too cold so i want them to understand that not only is air filtration really important if you don't smell anything but but also plants and we watched a video on particular plants that have been tested to help clean the air and really discussed where for air quality comes from not only in the home but also outside the home so that they had you know a basis of understanding and trust and again i say you're giving them  you know the idea is i wouldn't give you know the bad stuff if i didn't feel that there was enough effective good stuff but you can grow out of actions to take to really you know make people comfortable with some minor changes to their lives so next week's topic out there for well you know i wanted to have a catchy title again because it's hard to get these guys in so you know their attention span is you know i think every we should mention that you're doing the series after school on wednesdays so it's not part of a class i some kids get extra credit thank you right i should bring food and i'll probably get more kids but it's really meant for people who are interested in usually and hoping that they'll continue to do that you know stay for all six letters a little because that will give me the most you know data available to see where we are with this you know a lecture series but this coming lecture is is actually really fun because i did some of this couple years ago is really you know trying to figure out what they i don't need to know what they use i'm just using general products and i distribute them and we're going to talk about a little bit about you know the history of regulation a personal care products you know what are some of the ingredients that are often in these products and what are really the health related issues to those chemicals this again there's plenty of you know bench research on this and then really give them an opportunity to not only think about what they put on their bodies but also how they could very simply look up the levels of you know of ingredients that may be harmful from very what again vetted apps and websites and and really let them choose from a menu of things that are actually considered much safer in this market now there are so many opportunities to choose better products five years ago ten years ago it would been a lot harder but in this staining age you know it's there's an opportunity to genetic movement i feel like social media see an advertisement for some product whether it's the odor and or some other product almost every single day every day so many options out there actually in companies they see that there is financial value even if there's no altruistic value but there is a financial value and when i say moving the market when people buy these products and there's they're telling you know marketers that this is what they want boom all this and there's more more products available because people want to cash in on that fine with me as long as people have options you know so the next topic is  the type of antibiotic under the mattress yeah it's they're listed as in a biopic but they've been taken off the market coming up soon just try close and in about eighteen of its partners but hasn't been taken out of almost any other products but just the soap so we now have those chemicals in yoga mats you know cutting boards in household utensils cooking utensils they'd fuse it into the plastic so this concept of being anti germ is actually backfiring on us and we're having more and more bacterial resistance which means that antibiotics don't work when people actually need them to work they've they've changed themselves because they were exposed to one chemical and they've changed themselves and they're now thriving so you know that this is a real problem nationally and internationally in terms of having enough antibiotics left that work so it's been a nice change in the market but it's just to keep you know students aware that we have a lot of these chemicals everywhere even if they're small changes to the market that particular lecture is going to be a little complicated because i'm trying to stuff in a lot of different that a lot of different topics so i'm going to give them sort of the you know the basics and and try to make it reasonable and not overwhelming which is always a challenge but yeah that's kind of putting it all the leftover chemical groups together and trying to make heads or tails of it with them and are you hoping that these teenagers will sort of understand what these chemicals are what they do you how they function where they may be found so that again as they're shopping or as they're using products that they can really just have that knowledge of ok so i and yoga mat the anti bacterial exactly this kind of a look i had need to make that decision of whether or not i want that exactly and so i don't mean to cut you out but you know the idea being is that if i could even just get a small percentage of what i'm trying to convey to  them to stick i'll be pleased but it's it's the general feeling of a body awareness being more alert not using products and kind of haphazardly as if they have no value or no health health issues  to be again armed with apps and websites that are easy to use and you know on the go even and so that people don't have to you know feel like they are you know the system is against them and that really ties into the the great question so just recently i had written a textbook along with dr fred von sol who was generally well known for having taken b p a out of baby bottles in two thousand and ten so he's that kind of guy you know bench researcher and it just came out in march and my chapter in the text was proactive approaches to managing environmental exposures so i'm taking a lot of that chapter which was you know an academic text somewhat of a consumer guide as well and try to relate to the students in a very reasonable way and so in short i talk about things like exercise which sounds very interesting but i read put it in i turn it to the context of how does exercise actually mobilize chemicals from the body so i go into how it works from fat cells and how these chemicals often reside in fat cells because they they're lipophilic they love fat and how actually just exercising believe it or not actually mobilizes some of those chemicals for elimination or i talk about sleep and how sleep actually when you sleep there's actually a lymphatic system in the brain that washes chemicals out of the brain and this was just discovered a few years ago we're going to talk about a couple of those key articles there are medical journal articles  we're going to talk about also certain foods green leafy vegetables if they're not obviously with pesticides on them they are very good at binding certain chemicals like b p a certain probiotics can help bind heavy metals like lead and mercury that we're going to go through some of the things that people can do proactively in terms of what they eat but also what they can avoid in food and drinks in terms of preservatives and coloring but also what they can do practically in terms of choice exercise sleep things that they can handle really quite easily but in that perspective of detox ing those wonderful and the six who fears it really sounds like the students are getting a mix of learning about chemistry and biology and and health nutrition you know all the it's all connected and so that's why in our environment is connected to human health so we want to protect our oceans and our water well you know our waterways you want to you know take care of our air quality because that's directly affecting human life so we're all in this together definitely will