My daughter and I both were curious about our body burdens for those chemicals. A number of those chemicals could be tested fairly cheaply in urine.
I found out that there were a handful of chemicals that government scientists were looking at to try and figure out why girls were going through puberty earlier.
I think it makes the science a little bit more human. Williams: Participatory journalism appeals to me. Why did you choose to essentially experiment on yourself and your daughter? Van Gelder: One of the things I found fascinating about your book is that you actually test yourself to find out what kind of chemical body burden you’re carrying around and what’s going on with your child, as well. Our world is filled with hormones and substances that mimic hormones. Estrogen tells our breasts when we’re pregnant and when they need to start building the mammary glands, so they’re very hormonally sensitive. Circulating estrogen tells the breasts when to grow in puberty. They’re full of estrogen receptors, which are the body’s way of communicating with the outside world. They’re these incredibly dynamic organs, and then because of that, they are very influenced by the environment.Įvolution designed breasts to be responsive to the environment. They go through these incredible cellular changes every monthly cycle and then, of course, every pregnancy. They really don’t develop until the last trimester of pregnancy in adulthood, and so because of that, they’re sort of undifferentiated for a long time. And the reason for that is because breasts are really the last organs in our body to develop. Sarah van Gelder : Are there any other organs of the body that go through as many changes?įlorence Williams: There really aren’t. Her research became the 2012 book, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, which won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and an Audie audiobook award for general nonfiction.Įditor at Large Sarah van Gelder spoke with Williams about her book and how the environment affects breasts at every stage of life. Williams and her daughter started a “detox diet,” weaning themselves off perfumed soaps and other exposure risks. The result: higher than average levels of the kinds of substances found in common consumer products, such as phthalates, triclosan, and BPA (bisphenol A). Her investigation would span years and would lead her to a dramatic step: testing her own breast milk and, later, having both herself and her young daughter evaluated for chemicals in their bodies. A longtime science and environmental journalist, Williams began to delve into the purpose and function of women’s breasts and to examine the chemicals that were reportedly found in breast milk. When Florence Williams was breastfeeding her infant daughter a decade ago, she started thinking more about the mechanics of her body.
0 kommentar(er)
