The unsettling chemicals around us
No one who has ever worried about toxic chemicals in the everyday environment would have had his or her fears allayed by attending the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health forum “Hormone-Altering Chemicals: Fertility and Health Implications.” Presented jointly with the Huffington Post, whose senior living editor, Erin Schumaker, was the moderator, the panel focused on chemicals that affect the endocrine system, and their effects on fertility and childbirth. But the central point of the talk was contained in four words, screened in a video by the Environmental Working Group: “Toxic chemicals are everywhere.” The panel opened Tuesday afternoon with some sobering statistics: Everyday products —personal hygiene products, medications, food packaging, objects such as window blinds — contain more than 10,000 chemicals that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and many of them are banned in China and the European Union. Russ Hauser, acting chair of the Department...