What are chemical pollutants doing to our bodies? It’s a timely question to come up with that last week, people in Philadelphia emptied bottled water on grocery store shelves after poison leaked from a chemical plant into a tributary of the Delaware River. , the source of drinking water for 14 million people. And just last month, a train carrying another batch of hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, releasing an unspecified amount of toxic chemicals.
There is no doubt that we are polluting the planet. To find out how these pollutants can affect our own bodies, we need to figure out how we are exposed to them. What chemicals are we inhaling, ingesting, and digesting? And how much? The field of exosomics, which seeks to study our exposure to pollutants, can, among other factors, help provide us with some much-needed answers. Read full story.
—Jessica Hamzelou
This story is from The Checkup, Jessica’s weekly biotech newsletter. Register to get it in your inbox every Thursday.
Read more:
+ Toxic chemicals all around us. Meet Nicolette Bugher, a researcher working to uncover the toxins lurking in our environment and uncover their implications for human health. Read full story.
+ Build a better chemical factory—from bacteria. Professor Kristala Jones Prather is helping turn bacteria into efficient producers of desired chemicals. Read full story.
+ Microplastics are messing with the seabird’s microbiome. The next step is to find out what this might mean for their health—and ours. Read full story.
