800: Protecting Children's Health from Toxic Hazards and Environmental Exposures - Dr. Philip Landrigan
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Hi, everyone. I'm Dr. Marie McNeely, and I am thrilled to have you joining me today for Episode 800 of People Behind Bars.

the science. After more than a decade of sharing stories from scientists, we're excited to celebrate this landmark episode with our guest, Dr. Philip Landrigan. Listeners, if you've been enjoying our People Behind the Science episodes, we would be so grateful if you could share our show with a friend, leave a rating or review, or consider a small donation on our website at peoplebehindthescience.com support to help us share more stories from amazing researchers.

And today, we can't wait for you to hear about Phil's life and career. So

Listeners, get ready to meet another one of our phenomenal people behind the science. Every day, discoveries are made that will change our understanding of the world around us. Dr. Marie McNeely is here to bring you the brilliant minds who are making these discoveries so they can share their incredible stories and take you on an amazing journey. Welcome to People Behind the Science. Music

Hello, everyone, and welcome to People Behind the Science. Today, I am thrilled to be speaking with our guest scientist, Dr. Philip J. Landrigan. So, Phil, welcome to our show today. How are you? It's a pleasure to be here. Doing well, but very cold in Boston, six degrees today. I feel you there on the cold weather. It's not my jam, but we are so glad that you joined us today on this frigid, cold day. I

And we'd love to learn more about you and some of your experiences in science. But listeners, let me first tell you a little bit more about Phil. Phil is a pediatrician and public health doctor. He's professor of biology, director of the Program for Global Health and Common Good, and director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society at Boston College.

He is also Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Phil completed his undergraduate studies in biology at Boston College, and he got his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. After an internship at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, he completed his residency at Boston Children's Hospital.

And Phil also earned a master's degree with distinction in occupational medicine from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of London. He worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai before joining the faculty at Boston College where he is today. And he's also spent a sabbatical working at the U.S. Environmental Health Protection Agency.

Now, Phil is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Epidemiological Society. In addition, he's an elected fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine, the New York Academy of Medicine, the New York Academy of Sciences, the American College of Occupational Environmental Medicine, the American College of Epidemiology, the Royal Society of Medicine, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. He's also earned numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including the

The Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Humanity from the National Institute of Social Sciences. The Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Council for Science and the Environment. The Lifetime Achievement Award from Healthy Child, Healthy World. The Child Health Champion Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Meritus Service Medal of the U.S. Public Health Service. Multiple Commendation Medals from the Navy and Marine Corps. The Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service. The

the National Defense Service Medal, and many others. And Phil, today we're excited to get to know you as a scientist and as a clinician, of course, but also as a person. So can you tell us what do you like to do when you're not very busy with science and medicine?

Well, when the sun's up, I'm an outdoor person. I love hiking. I love kayaking. I used to be a marathoner, but my knees gave out from that a long time ago. And then in the evening, after the sun goes down, I'm a reader. Don't watch as much TV as I probably should. Probably don't see as many movies as I ought to. Gotcha. I think reading is fantastic. And of course, getting outside and staying active.

And we love talking about books on the show. So, Phil, do you have some favorites that you'd like to recommend for me and our listeners today to add to our own reading lists? For anybody who wants a bit of escape reading and also likes New England, I recommend the stories by the late Robert Parker, which are detective stories set mostly in the city of Boston.

And then for interesting reading about life and the world around us, it doesn't get much better than Bill Bryson. Fantastic recommendations. We will definitely add these to our website for listeners to find there. And Phil, we talked a little bit about life outside of work. We'd love to hear more about your work as well. You're doing some remarkable and very important research, but how do you describe it to someone who is outside of science or maybe outside of this public health space?

Well, my work basically centers on answering the question, how do harmful exposures in the environment harm human health? And because I'm a pediatrician, I focus especially on how do those exposures harm children's health. But then also in the next breath, because I am trained as a public health person and spent many years at CDC, I always ask myself, if some exposure is harming people's health, harming children's health, how can we best harness our science to

to prevent that exposure, to keep kids healthy, to prevent disease. I've been doing this work for a long time. It started with studies that my colleagues and I did of lead poisoning way back in the 1970s, and then studies of air pollution and pesticides and other toxic chemicals in the 80s and 90s. And then in the last 15 or 20 years, I've taken this work to a global scale, and I've been looking at the global impacts of things like pollution and pollution

plastic pollution and chemical pollution and how do they affect people's health, especially children's health.

Oh, wonderful. Well, Phil, I think this is remarkable work. And again, I think so critical because it seems like there's always something in the headlines that we're learning more and more about these things that we perhaps thought were safe or didn't realize were so dangerous are in fact causing some major health problems. And I think this can be maybe a little bit difficult to find the joy in the work because it seems like it's always bad news. But do you have a favorite quote or something that really keeps you motivated and inspired?

I think the real joy comes from winning. In my early years at CDC, before I moved more into thinking about chemical exposures, I was involved in the global campaign to eradicate smallpox. This was an extraordinary triumph that the United States and Russia co-led in partnership with the World Health Organization. And

and we eradicated smallpox from the face of the earth. It was really a remarkable achievement. And then in the 70s, the studies that colleagues and I did showing that lead was toxic to children, even at very low levels, that it eroded their intelligence, reduced their IQ, interfered with their behavior. That series of studies that a group of us did at that time led to a momentous decision by the Environmental Protection Agency in the mid-1970s

to get lead out of gasoline and to get lead out of new paint. And the consequence of the removal of lead from gasoline and paint was that we have seen blood lead levels in American children drop by 95% since the 1970s. And at the same time, we have seen kids' intelligence increase because they are no longer burdened by lead. And just savoring those victories and seeing how many millions of children's lives we've improved by those interventions.

That's the kind of thing that keeps me going. To be sure, these battles take years. There are setbacks. There are political issues that intervene and get in the way of protecting kids' health. But when you can protect children from harmful agents, when you can enable children to thrive and survive in today's complicated world, that's really a source of enormous joy.

Absolutely. I think these big wins can be tremendously rewarding and motivating. And I think many scientists don't even get to see this level of big wins. So I think you've been in a unique space, having these victories, working so hard to make progress in this field. But I

But I'd love to talk about role models and mentors. I think you can't get to this top peak performance part of your career without having help along the way. So, Phil, when you look back, were there people who helped you get to where you are today or who you looked up to as role models and mentors?

Yeah, I know. Role models, mentors are so incredibly important. And I've been blessed to have a lot of them. Way back when I was still a pediatric resident, there was a charismatic doctor at Boston Children's Hospital, Charles Janeway, who was just the epitome of the perfect pediatrician.

Then in the 70s, when I was at the CDC in Atlanta, I was surrounded by giants. There was Alex Landon Langmuir, who founded the Epidemic Intelligence Service Program at CDC. There was David Sensor. There was Michael Gregg, Bill Fagey, Donald Millar, just a whole series of gigantic figures in public health who changed the shape of the world we lived in and certainly made a profound impact on me.

And then in my years at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, I had the privilege to work with Irving Selikoff, who was a world leader in reducing Americans' exposure to asbestos. He did a lot of the basic science that linked asbestos to cancer and other diseases.

And then he was a powerful advocate who took his scientific findings, testified before Congress, and succeeded in banning most uses of asbestos in the United States and thereby saving millions of lives of American workers. That's amazing. And I think you've had a really remarkable career path where, like you said, you've been able to work with some of these giants in the field. But could you tell us what first got you on this path? How did you start getting interested in science in the first place?

Yeah, I guess I probably first got interested in science when I was just a kid. I was in the Boy Scouts. I was always fascinated by nature. My parents bought me a microscope when I was about 10 years old, and I just thought it was extremely cool to look at things like human hair and the legs of bugs under the microscope. I guess that's how I got started. And I made the decision quite young, probably 14 or 15, that I wanted to be a doctor. Wow.

Very interesting. And then once you made that decision, what were some of the key points along your career path that really helped you get to where you are today? Well, I think mentoring at every stage was key. People that guided me, that shaped me, some of the people that we were just talking about were just tremendous sources of inspiration. Definitely.

Definitely. And I think for a lot of people, they may make this decision like, OK, I want to be a doctor and they may not be aware of like science or research as a career. So can you tell us what were some of those early experiences that made you decide that you wanted to do clinical work as well as research, kind of this clinician scientist path as opposed to one or the other?

Well, when I first went to medical school, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a surgeon. But then after three months on the surgical service at one of the big Boston hospitals, I realized that surgery was not for me. And a few months later, I had my rotation on pediatrics. I fell in love with pediatrics and I've never looked back.

The way I got into public health research basically had to do with the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War era, there was a doctor draft in this country. Every male physician had to do two years of national service. So when my draft number was called, I applied for the U.S. Public Health Service, and I was lucky enough to get accepted into the Public Health Service, another branch of the uniform services. We had a uniform that looked like a Navy uniform. And I was assigned to the CDC headquarters in Atlanta.

And I went there for what I thought was going to be two years. I'd put in two years learning a bit about public health and then return to New England to be a pediatrician. But I found that I just loved public health. I found that preventing disease made an awful lot of sense and in some respects was more rewarding than treating children who are already sick with disease. So I made the decision to stay with CDC and I stayed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

for a total of 15 years working first in infectious diseases, then in environmental health in Atlanta, and then a few years doing occupational health for CDC based in Cincinnati. That makes sense. And along the way earlier, Phil, you actually got a master's degree in London. So can you talk about that experience and how it entered your path?

The way that came about was in 74, the three of us started a small unit at CDC, which was CDC's first foray into non-communicable diseases. Up until that time, it was actually called the Communicable Disease Center, and then the name changed to Centers for Disease Control. So we had this little tiny unit that was running around the country chasing pesticide exposures, air pollution, chemical spills, smelters, various environmental hazards.

And I realized one day as I was flying up from Atlanta to Wisconsin to investigate a chemical spill in a small town in Wisconsin, I was reading about the chemical phenol in a textbook on my lap on the airplane on my way to Wisconsin. And I said to myself, this is no way to be an expert.

I can't just read up on the airplane on my way to a problem and then sensibly advise people I need to go back to school and get more formal training. And so I applied for formal education through CDC, and they were good enough to send me to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for a year where I studied occupational medicine, environmental medicine, epidemiology, and toxicology, and basically got the tools I needed to do the work I do today.

Very interesting. And I think these are big problems that you're tackling pollution, dangerous chemicals and just trying to keep children safe. Was there ever a moment on that career path where you felt overwhelmed or you felt like maybe you had made the wrong decision back then in medical school?

I've always liked this work. I've always thought it was meaningful. I've been doing it now for more than five decades, and I still wake up each morning and look forward to the day. I think that's wonderful. So I know you've got a lot of different projects that you've done over the years, and I'm sure a lot on your plate still. So is there a particular project, Phil, that you are working on right now that you are the most excited about? Right now, I'm working on a project called

Well, I'm part of a large group of people, international group, who are working on the problems of chemical and plastic pollution and specifically looking at what impacts chemical and plastics have on human health across their life cycle from pollution.

production, through use, and on to disposal of these materials into the environment. And we published several big reports that deal with aspects of this problem. A couple of years ago, we worked with the Principality of Monaco to produce a report on human health and ocean pollution, which looked at plastics, chemicals, and other contaminants in the ocean. Just last week, a group of 25 of us published a big article in the

New England Journal of Medicine called Manufactured Chemicals and Children's Health, The Need for New Law. We talked about rising rates of non-communicable diseases in American children. We summarized the strong and growing body of evidence that links these non-communicable diseases to toxic chemicals. And then the lawyers in our group laid out proposals for fixing federal law and international treaties to better protect kids against toxic chemicals.

And then I've worked with a foundation in Australia called the Mindaroo Foundation. We produced a big report last year called the Mindaroo Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health. And we presented a very comprehensive picture, 150 pages, 1500 references of

plastics' harmful impacts on human health. We're just now in the process of launching a new venture, which is based on that Minner-Romanico Commission. We partnered with The Lancet, which is the big biomedical publication out of London, to set up something called The Lancet Countdown on Health and Plastics, which will track the human health impacts of plastics on an annual basis going forward as the UN Global Treaty on Plastics comes into force.

Well, I think this is a phenomenal effort. And I think this is truly interdisciplinary work, even in what you just described. These are lawyers, policymakers, foundations, researchers, other clinicians that you're interacting with. What is it like to be working with such a diverse group of professionals?

Well, it's never boring. When you work with people who have so many different perspectives and such varied life experiences, you get insights that you simply could not have imagined on your own. It's really quite intellectually stimulating and it's a lot of fun. And they're generally good people, fun to interact with. And I just find the whole process very enjoyable. It's really good work. And then at the end of the day, you hope you're making a difference in the real world. Absolutely. I love to hear that. And I think you

you are making these big impacts. But I think every scientist has these days where it just seems like everything is going wrong. So Phil, do you have an example of a time where you really struggled with something or perhaps you had a major failure? And if so, could you talk us through it and how you recovered?

One program that took an awfully long time to bring to fruition was a program to create a statewide network of centers of excellence on children's environmental health in New York State. For many years, I was in New York. I was at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in Manhattan, and I was in charge of preventive medicine there and a professor of pediatrics.

And a group of us had the notion that it would be very important to have a statewide network of centers of excellence that could assist children and families who were dealing with environmental hazards, kids with lead poisoning, families who were exposed to pesticides.

families who live near toxic waste dumps, that kind of thing. And we looked around and we saw that there were many such problems in New York as there are across the country. And yet we saw that parents and families had no resources. If a child has a blood disease, they can go to the hematologist. If a child has seizures, they can go to the pediatric neurologist. But

But there was nobody to go to if there was an environmental problem. So we said, hey, it makes sense to set up a network of centers that would have a pediatrician, maybe a nurse practitioner or two, a social worker, somebody who is specialized, an engineer or another person who's specialized in measuring environmental exposures, put together these small multidisciplinary teams.

position them in academic health centers across the state from Long Island to Buffalo, and they'd be a resource for children and for families.

And we worked with the state legislature for years. I can't tell you how many trips I made back and forth from New York City to Albany to meet with state legislators to argue the need for such a network. We actually produced a book, 100-page book, cataloging the burden of disease and death due to environmental hazards amongst children in New York State.

We brought in an economist who calculated the cost of those diseases and the benefits that would be achieved by having proper resources in academic health centers across the state. And it just went on and on for years and years to no avail. We just couldn't find the right combination of factors to make the thing happen. We got a small center, started at Mount Sinai where I was.

but nothing across the state. And then finally, after 10 years of effort, we finally got a meeting with the governor, who at that time was Andrew Cuomo. Everything worked out perfectly. And within a few weeks, the network was established. The money was found.

It was locked in and it's running today. Oh, wow. I think all of this speaks to the need to just be incredibly persistent, to look for opportunities, to keep reevaluating the scientific and the political terrain in which you're operating to find out how to best put the pieces together. And if you do all that, if you stick with it, I think you can usually win. I know these are tough times right now. We're just going to have to buckle down and continue to be patient. Definitely.

Definitely. I think that's an important message for everybody out there. And for you, in this case, it sounds like things turned around and started happening really quickly. What was that tipping point? And was it difficult to get everything ramped up so quickly? You mentioned three weeks and already that network was established.

No, we knew exactly what to do. And as soon as we had the money, we put it into place. I think just getting a meeting with the governor and his immediate staff was key and being able to tell the story face to face of what were the problems and saying, listen, we've got some real problems out there, but we also have some remedies. And these remedies are highly cost effective. Give us the money. We can make it happen. We can give you a good product.

And I think the secret was not just talking about the problem, but talking about the solution. I think that's such an important note there because I think so many people in leadership positions are used to people coming with problems and they're not necessarily used to people coming with the solutions as well.

And I think those face-to-face meetings can be so critical and so valuable for building relationships in an age where everything seems to be moving more and more digital. So I appreciate you sharing one of these difficult times, but we'd also like to talk about successes. You've mentioned a few of them already today, and I think these wins can be tremendously powerful and encouraging you to tackle the next big challenge. So do you have a favorite win or maybe even a recent win that you'd like to share with us, whether it was a big one or just a small but particularly meaningful one?

I can think of several over the years. I've already mentioned the decision in 1975 to take lead out of gasoline. That was huge. The very last country in the world to remove lead from gasoline was Algeria, which did so in 2021. So automotive gasoline around the world is now lead free. And that all began in America.

Another big win was in the late 1990s. I had the privilege to chair a committee at the National Academy of Sciences that looked at children's exposure to pesticides in the United States. And it turns out that the food that children eat is a major source of pesticide exposure because pesticides that are applied to crops carry through into the foods in the grocery store and kids are exposed to them when they eat their cereal or eat fruits and vegetables.

So a group of us at the National Academy spent five years analyzing patterns of children's exposure to pesticides, comparing and contrasting the vulnerability of children and adults, and then looking at the laws that were in place at that time to protect Americans against pesticides in the diet. And what we found was that children are more heavily exposed to pesticides than adults,

We found that they're much more vulnerable because of their processes of growth and development. And we found that the laws that were then in place were not doing an adequate job of protecting children because they were all based on protecting a healthy 21-year-old adult. So we said the laws needed to be revamped to recognize children's unique vulnerabilities to pesticides.

And we produced that report in 1993. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. A big press day in Washington and then nothing for three years. But then in the summer of 1996, as that Congress was beginning to wind up its work,

The members of that Congress, which was led by Newt Gingrich, realized that many Americans perceive that they might be anti-environment or anti-child and that they better do something about it. And in the span of a couple of weeks in the summer of 1996, both houses of Congress got together and by unanimous vote,

of both houses, which seems totally implausible today. They passed a piece of legislation known as the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, which is the federal law on pesticides.

And it embodied everything that we had recommended in our National Academy of Sciences report. It basically said that pesticide regulation in this country needs to take special cognizance of children's unique susceptibilities. It has to build in safety factors. It has to do testing of pesticide chemicals to make sure they're not harmful to children.

The law has not always been fully implemented, but still getting that piece of legislation on the books was really a remarkable achievement. And it's something I look back upon with great pride.

Absolutely. I think this sounds like a wonderful achievement and I think something that takes a whole village and a lot of time to accomplish. And as you hinted in your response there, there's some definite differences when you're thinking about pediatric care versus adult care, whether it's vulnerability, susceptibility or exposures, etc. And I think not all clinical facilities are necessarily equipped to handle these.

these differences, they may not have the doctors they need, etc. So what do you see as just some of the biggest challenges or things that need to change to ensure that children are getting adequate care after exposure and then maybe also to prevent that exposure in the first place?

There are several things that are necessary. Firstly, there needs to be more education in medical schools and in nursing schools and in the education of all healthcare providers about environmental threats to health. It's certainly getting better. When I went through medical school, we got no more than a few hours of training in environmental and occupational medicine. Nowadays, many medical schools have already

whole courses on environmental health, occupational health, climate change and health. And many young doctors coming out across the United States are much more attuned to these issues than they were in times past. It's a continuing effort to persuade deans of schools of medicine to incorporate this material into curricula that are already too full. But we continue to chip away and I think we're making progress.

I think another problem is that people outside of medicine, people that go into law, people that go into politics, don't really have much knowledge of how important environmental factors are for shaping human health. We humans do a great job of responding to crises. When there's a plane crash and 300 people are killed instantly, we respond beautifully. We put procedures into place. We strengthen the Federal Aviation Administration. We

We do fault analyses. We really respond beautifully well to acute crises, but we don't respond well, I suppose it's deeply wired in our genetics, to slow-moving catastrophes. We

We don't respond well to climate change. Too many of us tend to deny it. We don't recognize that relatively low-level exposures to synthetic chemicals like phthalates and bisphenol A and flame retardants are eroding children's intelligence even before they're born. Exposures that take place in the mother's womb during pregnancy cause brain injury to kids.

and erode their intelligence even before they're born. And we don't react well to these kind of slow-moving crises. Instead, we double down and say, it's time to free the chemical industry from any kind of regulation, totally ignoring the fact that a chemical industry that's free to regulation will result in harm to children. So we've got a lot of work to do, I think, in this country about educating people about how do they relate to the world around them? What's the proper ethical way to behave in today's complicated world?

Absolutely. I think those are some really important points. I think making it personal helps. If it's this abstract idea in a scientific paper, people can dissociate or maybe not think about how that impacts their everyday life. I couldn't agree with you more. I think that making these abstract problems concrete is what it's all about.

For 30 years, the climate scientists were doing some elegant science, looking at levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, measuring the global mean surface temperature, showing that all the curves were going in the wrong direction. And it made very little impact on the average person because it was just too remote from their daily life. And people are busy. People got to feed their kids. They've got to pay the rent. They couldn't see that the stuff that was going on in the upper atmosphere had any bearing on how they lived their lives.

But then all of a sudden, with the California wildfires, with coastal flooding, with rising sea levels, with erosion of coastal lands, people are suddenly saying, oh, my word, global warming is real. Climate change is with us. It's affecting our health. It's affecting our kids' health. We've got to do something about it. And I think storytelling becomes a very important adjunct to the marshalling of scientific facts.

Absolutely. I think telling those stories, making it relatable and making it something that people want to listen to, I think is a big challenge of scientists today. And I think you get to work on some really big, important problems in the work that you do, Phil, that we've talked about today. But I think one of the things we haven't yet talked about are some of the opportunities that you've had to travel the world and to just engage in these conversations with scientists all over the world. So

When you think about your career, do you have a favorite place that your science has taken you? And if so, what made that trip so memorable? Well, I've had the privilege to travel to a lot of places. I spent quite a bit of time in my early years at CDC working in Africa. I spent the better part of one year in Nigeria, for example, working on childhood immunization campaigns.

I spent the better part of another year working in El Salvador, again, working on childhood immunization and had the privilege to learn Spanish as a street language and to work with scientists and pediatricians in that country.

More recently, I've had wonderful collaborations with the Scientific Center of Monaco, with the Mindrew Foundation in Australia, with the Ramazzini Institute in Bologna, Italy. Each of those is rich. It's hard to say that one is a favorite. The Chulaborn Research Institute in Thailand. They're just spectacular institutions.

staffed by outstanding scientists, and every one of them is a great experience. Wonderful. Well, we won't make you pick a favorite today, but can you tell us about a recent trip that you've had, perhaps?

My most recent overseas trip was to Monaco, to the Scientific Center of Monaco, where we brought together a group of about 25 scientists to do the initial planning for the Lancet countdown on health and plastics that we're going to be kicking off this year. The occasion for this is that the United Nations is currently in the final stages of negotiating a global plastics treaty.

If everything sticks to target, the Global Plastics Treaty will come into force in 2025 or 2026. And a group of us decided that it would be very important to have an independent

accountability mechanism that could track progress on plastics, see where we're going, see what are the trend lines, what impacts are plastics having on human health. And we had the good fortune to partner with The Lancet, which is the world's most widely read medical journal published out of London, to establish this thing. Lancet has had a Lancet countdown on human health and climate change running for about the past decade.

which has proven very influential in marshalling independent data on the impacts of climate change on human health. And we hope with this new Lancet count on health and plastics to do the same thing for plastics. So very exciting, great trip. And of course, Monaco is a great place to visit. Excellent. So if our listeners are able to make it to Monaco, were there particular things that you saw or did while you were there for this trip or maybe previous trips that you think people should definitely check out? Well,

Well, absolutely visit the Oceanographic Museum, which is just spectacular. The Principality of Monaco has been involved for multiple generations of princes in protecting the ocean, first the Mediterranean and now the global ocean. And the Oceanographic Museum is a spectacular collection of history and artifacts that recounts that history. There are also some great day trips that one can take outside.

outside the city. Nice is a fantastic place. Villefranche-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean coast, where the US 6th Fleet used to be headquartered as a lovely town. And there's a great little restaurant there called Mer Jermain, which I recommend. And if somebody wants to go up into the mountains, which rise very steeply behind Monaco, there's a village up there called Aise, spelled E-Z-E, which is easily reached by city bus. It's about a 30, 40 minute bus ride from downtown Monaco.

Well, Phil, this all sounds magnificent. Listeners will definitely have to plan our travel itineraries accordingly.

And I think we've talked about some of the amazing people that you've been able to work with in the work that you've done over the years. And I think oftentimes scientists don't get the best reputation when they're portrayed in the media. So we try to break some of the stereotypes that people may have. So do you have an example of one of these human moments in science, whether it was a quirky tradition, a funny memory, or just an unusual personality, perhaps that you encountered in one of the labs that you worked in or in one of these projects that you've been working on over the years?

Let me answer it in a slightly different way and tell you about a very unusual partnership that we put together within the past year. So I've been based now since 2018 at Boston College, which is a Jesuit Catholic university in Boston. And one of the great strengths of Boston College is our theology department. We have a Klaus School of Theology and Ministry. We have some world-class theologians and ethicists here.

representing many different faith traditions, not just Catholic.

And I said to myself one day, wouldn't it be interesting to partner with some of the moral theologians and the ethicists who are on our campus and take a look at some of these global problems like plastic pollution or climate change through the lens of ethics and morality? So we put together a two-day conference back in October of 2024, where we examined plastic pollution from the perspective of morality.

and came to the conclusion, buttressed by a number of theologians, that current patterns of chemical and plastic production, which are just relentlessly polluting the world with multiple different types of plastic and hundreds of thousands of different chemicals, that it's just not moral to dump all of these synthetic materials onto the planet that we all share, this frail blue planet. It

It's just not a moral thing to do to continue to recklessly pollute the planet with no heed to consequence. And we issued a powerful statement at the end of that conference, and it was signed by the Dalai Lama, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who was one of the leading figures in the Orthodox Church, spokespersons from the Vatican, prominent rabbis, bishops,

a prominent Episcopal theologian, a theologian from the evangelical community. We had all these voices coming together and saying, these are not just scientific issues. These are human issues. These are moral issues. We have to work together across the usual boundaries to do something about the problem.

I think this is a remarkable example of reaching across those bridges, those divides that often form. And I think this one between science and ethics and religion is often a deep chasm. Do you have an example of something maybe that changed your thinking that you heard about in one of these presentations or in a conversation with one of these ethicists or theologians?

There's been this sense going back, I suppose, to the time of Galileo and maybe before, but at least to the time of Galileo, that there's some kind of an inherent conflict between faith and science. The two cannot coexist.

And I had the chance about eight or 10 years ago to go to a conference that was organized in Rome, jointly organized by two unlikely bedfellows, Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of The Lancet, and Cardinal Ravasi, who was a Roman Catholic cardinal, one of the leading figures in the Roman Curia. And they explored this divide or this alleged divide between science and religion and said it doesn't exist, that

that science is actually a tool for exploring and coming to know and coming to understand the world, the creation that surrounds us. And there's no conflict at all with believing in a higher power, if you choose to believe in a higher power, and at the same time in using science to explore the workings of that higher power. It all goes together.

And I internalized that, and I think it was that thinking that led me to work with my colleagues in the theology department here at Boston College to put together that conference we convened last October.

Well, I think this is very interesting. I love this story. And I'm so glad you were able to, like you said, build those bridges, work with these people and find out that you were, in fact, on the same page on a lot of these matters. So I think that's wonderful. But I think a lot of problems still remain, unfortunately, unaddressed. And I think oftentimes, Phil, I'm sure you've experienced this, that things like funding and staff and technology and time and just the feasibility of these big projects that you want to do hold you back. So

If we took away all the barriers and you could do whatever you wanted, what is the one research question that you would want to answer most, Phil? If I had one research question I would really like to answer, I would like to be able to know within a very few years, what's the total burden of disease and premature death caused in children around the world by synthetic chemicals? The evidence we have today indicates that manufactured chemicals and plastics are

are probably responsible for millions of deaths, that they blight the lives of children around the world, especially in low- and middle-income countries. But we don't know the extent of this problem. We don't have the degree of detail on the chemical hazards that we have in relation to infectious diseases, for example. And absent good information on the burden of disease caused by toxic chemicals, it's hard to persuade policymakers

to intervene, to take action to prevent that disease. So if I really had unlimited resources, I would use an awful lot of money over the next five years to really, really map out the burden of disease and death caused by toxic chemicals. And then I would translate that scientific knowledge into rational, evidence-based policies for disease prevention.

Well, Phil, I love this post project. You've got me on board. We appreciate you giving us something to ponder this afternoon. And I think this is absolutely a worthy cause and something that we're chipping away slowly at, but absolutely needs more attention. And I know we've covered a lot of ground in our conversation today. And we always like to end by talking about advice. So when you think about your life and your career, Phil, was there one piece of advice that somebody gave you that really helped you that you could pass on to listeners today?

Seek out good mentors, more than one. What do you recommend in terms of the best way to find a good mentor?

Keep your eyes open in the place where you are. Look about you and see who are the people doing really good work on the issues, the questions in which you are interested. Don't be afraid to go up to them. Don't be deterred by geography. The best people might live in a faraway place, but you can reach anybody anywhere these days on the internet. And why not try? The worst they can do is say no.

I think that is a fantastic message to give our listeners. Don't be afraid to reach out, listeners. And is there any other last piece of advice or a last note of inspiration, Phil, that you want to end our conversation on today?

A couple of things. In your personal life, try to reduce your carbon footprint, your chemical footprint, your plastic footprint. You won't be able to eliminate any of those entirely, but you can certainly reduce. And if lots of us reduce, it makes a collective difference. Secondly, join with other people and work in your community to do things like reduce pesticide use in the school, to block the construction of synthetic fertilizers,

turf fields for football and soccer, which are basically chemical waste dumps, to ban plastic bags in supermarkets in your town. And then finally, be an engaged citizen. I think we've all come to realize that democracy is not a spectator sport. We have to vote if we want to bring about change. And

And if we want a world that is safe for children, a world that is not heavily polluted by toxic chemicals and plastics, we've got to vote for candidates of any party who are going to take action to protect our children and preserve this planet for future generations.

Well, I think that is a wonderful note to end on. Listeners, definitely take a active role, get engaged and involved in your community. And Phil, it's been such a pleasure to chat with you today. If our listeners want to learn more about you and all of the wonderful things that you're doing, let us know in the comments.

what is the best way for them to do so? Well, I have a website at my university at Boston College and they can look me up through the website. That's probably the easiest way. Fantastic. Well, listeners, definitely take some time to check out that website, learn more about his ongoing and past research projects and

And Phil, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for your time. Very welcome, Marie. The pleasure has been equal. Thank you. Well, it was wonderful to have you here. Listeners, always great to have you here as well. We hope you'll join us for our next episode of People Behind the Science.