Menopause affects every woman who lives to midlife, and yet it is understudied and undertreated – a research gap that many attribute to medical bias.
In today’s episode, Ken is joined by Dr. Lauren Petrick, an environmental health scientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she leads the Petrick Lab. She recently published a study, “Impact of Environmental Exposures on Menopausal Symptoms,” that synthesizes evidence from studies linking everyday chemical exposures – like phthalates, phenols, heavy metals, air pollution, and pesticides – to a wide range of menopausal symptoms. These symptoms range from hot flashes and mood changes to sleep disruption and beyond.
As a midlife woman, Petrick brings a personal lens to her research, which suggests that the phthalates in your plastic containers, the fragrances in your personal care products, and the air quality in your neighborhood may all be connected to the symptoms women experience during perimenopause and menopause.
She argues that perimenopause and menopause are a critical “window of susceptibility” to environmental exposures - much like pregnancy and puberty.
For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:
Dr. Petrick’s study: Environmental Exposures on Menopausal Symptoms
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Ken Cook: analytical chemistry into where you are now, right? That's not what that's not how most analytical chemists chart their course. And I was very interested in that.
Lauren Petrick: Yeah.
Ken Cook: Hi, this is Ken Cook, and welcome to Ken Cook is having another episode and I'm very excited about this episode because I get to spend some time with one of the people, Dr. Lauren Petrick, I've admired from afar. We've not met on a screen or in person before, and she really is at the cutting edge of environmental health. In so many ways. The work she's done over the course of her career, the most recent work she's done that I think we'll we'll be talking about today, and how her career has the trajectory of it, how she has ended up. She's now at Mount Sinai, she runs the Petrick Lab and she'll explain what that does. It's a very i it's a red hot laboratory in my view in terms of environmental health. Not just lots of publications coming out, but consequential ones. And so Dr. Lauren Petrick, th thank you for joining. I'm I'm really tickled to have you on Ken Cook is having another episode.
Lauren Petrick: Thank you. Thank you so much. I am thrilled to be here with you and to talk about the environment, environmental exposures, the exposome, and we'll talk about how it affects women's health.
Ken Cook: Yes. And I have questions f coming to you from not just from me but from my wife about that last point. So we'll we'll jump into that. But so d t talk a little bit about your background and how you started I don't say started off, but you're an analytical chemist by training and a lot of analytical chemists go in a very different direction than you went. So maybe that's a place to talk about that the chemistry interest and then
Lauren Petrick: Okay.
Ken Cook: What was the fork in the road that sent you in the direction you've taken now?
Lauren Petrick: Yeah. So I've always been interested in analytical chemistry as a tool to really solve puzzles, to quantify things, identify things, asking questions of why and what. And during my PhD I was interested in the environment and so I was measuring external environmental exposures and we would measure indoor air pollution and different chemical reactions and that was really exciting and I was excited to really focus on at the time I was looking at third hand smoke and exposures on surfaces and if we you know, these third hand smoke chemicals can come off the surfaces and we can be exposed to them and I started yeah.
Ken Cook: What a around what year is this? What what are we t when you're starting out? Not to not to ask a leading question about your a but
Lauren Petrick: A s yeah, so this was probably about 20 years ago. So yeah, so I was I was doing that and I was interested, I really liked what I was doing, but I started to ask the question if whether the things that I was measuring actually affected our health. Because we were measuring because we assumed that they were, but
Ken Cook: Okay, yeah.
Lauren Petrick: But I wasn't actually linking it to health. And that's when my first sort of shift happened, where I started to look at doing really toxicological studies, which means that I was taking some environmental exposures and putting them into cell studies and watching what happens. And that was really exciting. That was sort of my first step to move from analytical chemistry over to start to think about how this affects biology.
Ken Cook: And where were you at that point? Were you did you have your PhD already or what w wh where were you located at that point?
Lauren Petrick: Yeah, so I had my PhD, and that was my very first postdoctoral training. So I moved from an environmental and civil engineering faculty to the faculty of medicine. And that's where I did these first toxicological studies. And then I heard about the exposome. And I was at a I was at a yeah, and it blew my mind. I was at an international conference, and I remember hearing about this idea that you don't just measure five things. Or 10 exposures, but could you measure thousands in this at the same time? And because we're not we're not exposed to one thing, we're not exposed to five things. We're really exposed to thousands of things over the course of our life and even, you know, hundreds of things at the same time. And that just
Ken Cook: My gosh. And so you were basically you were basically interested in the real world, as we like to call it. Yeah. Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: Exactly. Exactly. And so that was that was That was my leap, right? I saw those, I saw that presentation. I said, my gosh, that's that's what I want to do. And so I was honored to be able to start studying the exposome in Steve Rappaport's lab as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley. And he was one of the pioneers of this exposome concept. Really, yeah. And he introduced me to the tools, which are these very
Ken Cook: Yep. Yep. Right across the bay. Yep. Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: Advanced scientific mass spectrometers, so high-resolution mass spectrometry that allows us to measure thousands of signals in a single blood sample. And that was that was where I started to get into the exposome and trying to understand if we can discover and identify new exposures and biological changes that are linked to later disease, really to try and find not just, you know, diagnose or to treat, but could we prevent, right? Could we start to prevent disease by identifying these exposures? and that started where I am now. From there, I then took those tools and opened my lab at Mount Sinai, where we have been, you know. Where was launched off of that platform and was able to expand the lab now with multiple high resolution mass spectrometers, an amazing team, where our goal is to really not only measure more, but can we measure them at lower concentrations? Can we measure them better? Can we measure them across different sample types that traditionally, you know, we were always looking at blood or urine samples. And there's there's a lot of wealth in that, but are there other sample types that You know, th those are hard to get from everybody and they're hard to get over multiple times. So can we measure other sample types that might be able to ask different questions? And so that's where my lab has been has been going, and we've been doing that to study and understand risk factors associated with cancers and autism and many other different diseases and disorders across the life course. And so that's why I'm there.
Ken Cook: Yeah.
Ken Cook: And it I invite every we'll we'll put a we'll definitely put a link into your laboratory so people can f discover for themselves the breadth of the work and the depth. But you know, just I was very impressed that as an organization that has practically bled people to death to get samples big enough to look for multiple chemicals, may he rest in peace. Poor Bill Moyers used to say, How much blood are you gonna take from me f for this biomonitoring study you're doing. But he survived that. But now you know you're you're looking at a dried sample of blood or wrist monitors all kinds of all kinds of media and pulling incredible information out of it.
Lauren Petrick: Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: Yeah, I think, you know, part of this is Realizing also for myself, it's it's it's hard for me to get to a clinic's office to get a blood draw. It's it some people don't have access, they have busy schedules, many different reasons. And so we've been working on how we can get these collections into the home so that people can do them with you know, minimally invasive with a single droplet onto either a piece of paper or other devices, or we can just wear a passive sampler. On your wrist. You can just put it on, wear it for seven days, and we can we can capture exposures. And this really allows us to think about, you know, what certain time frames that people might be interested or how they can effectively look at either, you know, times during pregnancy, where it might be might be even more challenging to get sort of multiple measures or look at children. You know, children we don't we don't wanna have our children get a blood draw. I wanna want my children to get a blood draw. But I can I can handle a little heel prick, right? these type of things. So or we can put wristbands on teenagers, right? Teenagers really hate to do any sort of exposure studies, but we can we can use wristbands and and get some
Ken Cook: Yeah.
Ken Cook: Exactly. Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: get broad measurements across, you know, c twenty classes of chemicals in a single in a single measurement, in a single sample.
Ken Cook: So there's so many dr I have so many questions for you. I have so many areas that I want to share with our audience of your work. But let me just start with where does metabolomics come in to your work? we've got the exposome, but now explain about that frontier. And I'm I'm describing these as frontiers. I'm not saying you're the only person doing it, but you're doing Vanguard work in all of these places that you're touching and we maybe circle back to this, the gap between w what you're doing and what science is r revealing to us about the links between our environment and health is miles ahead of where we are with respect to policy and regulation at this point. That you're this is the groundwork for what we I at least I hope one day we'll, you know, more thoroughly inform. How we deal with environmental contaminants, because my working belief is that we now have a system where we basically say, you know, as long as it's legal or de minimis or we don't know what it is, there is literally no limit to the number of things we can add to human beings from industrial sources. No limit. And so, ooh, that's a that's a big problem to take on. So how does metabolomics fit into that?
Lauren Petrick: Yeah, so I kind of think about metabolomics as a measurement of what is happening in your body right now. And when we think about exposomics, we're thinking about well, how did it get there? Right? Can we measure environmental exposures that are going to help us understand how those biological changes occurred? The tool is very similar, right? We still use these high-resolution mass spectrometers. And what they do is they actually measure these thousands of signals. And the instrument can't tell or and doesn't care. Care whether that thing that you're measuring is an environmental exposure or a metabolite that's circulating already, a natural metabolite. So the instrument's measuring it the same, right? It's just the interpreter and how you, you know, alter your parameters to be able to cover this whole range. And so our we've developed our methods on these instruments so that we can capture both at the same time. And that allows us to get that those environmental exposure measures. Again, this you know, we're not looking at just five or ten, but we're trying to measure hundreds and discover new ones even. And to measure those endogenous metabolites so we can understand exposure and the biology that could be associated with it in the same in the same test. In the same small, you know, fifty microliter sample, we can we can do both.
Ken Cook: So amazing. So amazing. And it it speeds up the inquiry and the knowledge accumulation so dramatically to not have to rely on those older, more cumbersome and difficult means. Do you and so w what kinds of exposomic signals have you looked at? I know because I've read your a bunch of your papers, so but Sh i it's just like it's everything, it's everyday life. I mean, you seem to be looking at such a wide range of exposure events and looking at it you know, at i environmentally relevant levels. You're not you're not dosing people up and then running the same you're you seem to be just taking samples from people who are you know you know, relevant to the study, whatever un you're undertaking. Is that is that a fair do I have that about right?
Lauren Petrick: Yeah, that's exactly right. So we're I mean, what we do are epidemiological studies, right? So we're taking general population, free living individuals, and we're measuring their exposures and trying to link those to different health outcomes depending on the population that we're looking at. So these are real exposures. These are the circulating chemicals that are that are in their bodies or that are being absorbed to the to the wristbands. And so, you know, we can talk about, you know, one of the classes of chemicals I think that has a lot of interest right now is the PFAS chemicals, right? These are per and polyfluorinated alkyl substances. And we know that there's tens of thousand thousands of them that are being produced. And in a normal biomonitoring, what we typically measure, we're measuring, you know, 20 of those that are, and that's you know, what has been traditionally measured. But with these platforms that are in my laboratory, we
Ken Cook: Yeah.
Ken Cook: Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: measure those 20 and we can also discover novel fluorinated compounds and novel potential PFAS chemicals and we're starting to see new ones that may be associated that we're seeing associated with some of the different health outcomes and we're trying to dig in to see what these PFAS are and maybe we should be looking at them more broadly as well. So it gives us the opportunity we'll see I think you know, in a in a typical measurement of a population, we'll measure those probably about ten or twelve of those sort of traditional PFAS chemicals like PFOS and PFOA, which people are always measuring in PFHxS. But we'll measure maybe forty other potential fluorinated and PFAS chemicals that aren't that aren't characterized that aren't normally looked at that we can see associations with some of these health outcomes. So I think this gives us you know, a way to validate some of the findings that have been done from these traditional approaches, but also really be on the cutting edge of what we're exposed to because The chemical companies, right, they're being required to monitor only a s a certain handful. And at the same time these chemicals are being produced, there's also a lot of these other side chemicals that are that are being put in our water and putting put in our soil and we're not monitoring them at all. So these instruments and these assays give us an opportunity to sort of see what they are and if they have potential health effects.
Ken Cook: So at the risk of nerding out and losing people in the audience, but I think this will be I like to think this will be of as interesting to them as it as it is to me, but j take a s a step or two down the road of okay, so you have the it's it's an NM NMR device, is that is yeah. Mass mas okay. So you have the mass specs identifying the
Lauren Petrick: Ha
Lauren Petrick: High resolution mass spectrometer, HRMS.
Ken Cook: the compounds of interest. Tal talk us through how you go from the presence of that, finding that in a epidemiologically derived sample from regular people who might use personal care products, might use f might eat food, who who knew, might drink water, other dangerous activities. What
Lauren Petrick: Mm-hmm.
Lauren Petrick: Yeah. Floss their teeth.
Ken Cook: Rush yeah, Floss, please, that one killed me. And I thought you know, we've been doing PF PFAS, P PFOA, everything since the early two thousands. And as I tell people, I am always surprised by the next application of it that shows up in the world. But anyway, so take us whether it's use a an example of the forever chemicals, the PFAS or or anything else that makes sen sense to you. So you've it's it's detected And then what do you do? What's the and I think this is the metabolomics piece. How do you begin to understand how that might affect? I guess at the cellular level, you want to understand it first. And then from there you, you know, it's a question of further research needed to d demonstrate all the way down the road to maybe a health effect, but what's that first key step?
Lauren Petrick: Mm-hmm.
Lauren Petrick: Yeah. So if there's a population and we don't think about it in terms of like their health outcomes, right? We're just taking a population and we want to just look at, you know, we do a screening for their exposures and then we do a screening for their biology, all in the same assay, right? Yeah, so basically what I mean is that we inject the sample into the instrument and
Ken Cook: So that's a sur that's is that a survey? s when you say a screening or yeah.
Ken Cook: Okay. Okay.
Lauren Petrick: And it measures all of these signals, right? And the first thing we do is identify all of those signals. And so we'll identify a whole bunch of PFAS, right? Like you mentioned. And then we also can link a lot of these signals to metabolites. We know that there is, for example,
Ken Cook: The breakdown products of the breakdown products of the chemical that you're looking at or the fan yeah. Yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: So there can be those and there can be endogenous metabolites, right? To understand the biology, right? So for example, phthalates, we'll see not only the parent phthalate, but we'll see also the biological metabolites of that environmental exposure of those phthalates, right? Right. So we'll see those. And then we'll see things like amino acids, right? so and we'll see tyrosine, we'll see linolic acid, we'll measure DHA, right? These are all, you know, metabolites.
Ken Cook: The whole happy family. There they are. Yeah. Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: that we think of when you go get a normal blood screen or when you think about food and nutrition nutritional metabolites and things that are good for our bodies, right? so all of these What we can do is link these environmental exposures through statistics to changes in levels of these different metabolites that are linked to biological pathways. And so we can say, okay, this exposure to this one PFAS chemical, for example, PFHxS, right, is associated with all of these changes in oxidized lipids, right? Which suggests some lipid oxidation pathways are being interrupted. Or we can see that this chemical is. Is statistically associated with changes in the levels of amino acids, right? And so you can start to understand just on a general level, and not how it links down to further health outcomes, but how these chemicals are possibly related to changes in our different biological mechanisms that are that are happening or dis dysregulating them. Exactly.
Ken Cook: They're biologically active. Yeah. Yeah. And so and s and so from and so from there, I mean, you know, I think of the hallmarks of cancer, the pathways there, th those kinds of those kinds of insights, that's that's where the I s I presume down the road the linkage would begin to come together with additional research. Is that fair to say?
Lauren Petrick: Yeah, exactly. So then we can link those changes from the environmental exposures to changes in pathways that might be linked with inflammation to cancer outcomes, right? Or we can link the exposures to the cancer outcome and then understand the biology between them, right? We can work in different in different directions, putting those sort of three corners together.
Ken Cook: Amazing, amazing. So I l some a while back Linda Birnbaum came on the program and I asked her at one point, and I'll ask you the same question. She you know, this is she was you know, at the end of her career, she's she was retired, but I'd I'd known her for I think I've known Linda for thirty years. We can't we can't remember. And I asked her you know, of all the things you've studied, worked on, experienced as a you know, a scientist at the very top of the government. She was the director of NIEHS for many years, and before that was at EPA where I first crossed paths with her. And what was the thing? What what surprised you the most? What was the sort of discovery about environmental health or environmental toxicology or h however you want to characterize the field? And she said endocrine disrupting chemicals. When that when that came across her radar, you know, early mid nineteen nineties, when a lot of people, you know, we weren't even looking, right? We weren't even looking for these kinds of signals that might be associated with environmental substances that were in our bodies already and had been in our bodies for decades in many cases. What would it be for you, Lauren? What if you only get to pick one W what would what would be the thing that really kind of just blew your mind?
Lauren Petrick: Oof.
Lauren Petrick: I don't know if there's one chemical, right, that has blown my mind. I think, right, because like I've I've come into this, into this field when we right at the point of the exposome where everyone's saying, my gosh, there is I think the literature that has come out recently that really points to the fact that the exposome is a much bigger contributor.
Ken Cook: Right. That yeah.
Ken Cook: Yes.
Lauren Petrick: to most disease has been really flooring me compared to sort of the typical age and non-genetic factors. So this is really exciting as in terms of the research that needs to happen and moving this moving this forward.
Ken Cook: Yeah. That's a good one. That's a good one.
Ken Cook: That's a you picked a good one. That's a I love that one. I'll put I'll put that right up there with d with Dr. Bernbaum's endocrine disrupting chemicals. It is mind blowing to think about the exposome in that way. And I and I and you're right at the cutting edge of it. So now I'm gonna get to my wife's question now. W and sh it's a question with a little bit of attitude, which is okay we've we've studied
Lauren Petrick: Ha
Ken Cook: Early life, and we know the effect that some of these chemicals can have on you know reproductive success, you know, reproductive health generally, and so forth. And we've studied that in early life, bel probably belatedly in the case of women, and that's her that's her attitude right there, I'll just tell you. But when I s I showed her your paper.
Lauren Petrick: Mm-hmm.
Ken Cook: And her first reaction was of c well, of course, your latest paper looking at perimenopause and menopause and you know, mid and later in life impacts on women and their re reproductive health. And she said of well, that makes all the sense in the world, but you know, w why has it taken us so long to even study it? So you could you can editorialize here. I'm I'm I'm a guy, but I was raised by two women and so you know I'm I'm I'm ready to be on the receiving end of duh.
Lauren Petrick: Yeah, so I have to agree with her in the sense that I I mean I could tell you the challenges, right, of why this has taken quite a long time. Right? okay, okay. Okay, so I think one
Ken Cook: Tell us, tell us. Don't skip that part. Don't skip that part.
Lauren Petrick: You know, if we talk about menopause symptoms specifically, one of the main challenges is that there's no defined menopause syndrome, right? The symptoms range so broadly from the typical, which everyone thinks of as like a hot flash, right? To mood, to itchy skin, to anxiet right? There's just such a broad range and it's not there's no
Ken Cook: Right. Mm-hmm.
Lauren Petrick: There's no universally defined menopause syndrome. And so that makes it difficult. I agree. But right now there is not. And so that makes it hard to study associations with an outcome that is not clearly defined.
Ken Cook: Well there would be if gu if guys experienced those things, we'd know all about it by now, but go ahead. Yeah. Right.
Ken Cook: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: Right. So that's one of them. I think the other one of the other reasons is really it's just been taboo, right? we have not been talking about menopause just until the last five years. We this has become mainstream and we can talk about it and have honest scientific and intellectual, normal, everyday conversations about menopause. And so just bringing it to the forefront in terms of that it's it's it's an interest. And there's there's lots of cultures. Right, it's a it's an it's a lived experience, and how you experience menopause symptoms is different. You know, it's subjective and that and that makes it hard to study. And I think the last reason why we haven't studied is that we know that physicians aren't trained in menopause. And so if you go to a gynecologist, you know, for your regular visit, this is not something they've received training on and so it's not something that is really talked about. So I think those things have really limited our ability until recently to be able to really study this as a as a health outcome. And really and
Ken Cook: Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: And women's you know, in the context of women's health. But I'm really
Ken Cook: And you know, it i think no, and c correct me if I'm if I'm wrong, but as I was reading two of your papers, and one looked like it was just a i a predecessor to the other, the most recent one I want to talk to you about in more detail. But I was struck by thematically how it it read a lot like how the discovery or the understanding of early onset puberty. Finally broke through after years of debate and not paying attention and that it was that's very s and it's also very, you know, a little, you know, subjective to evaluate it, maybe not quite as subjective. But you know, I was I was struck by that. Is that a is that a fair com comparison or metaphor or whatever?
Lauren Petrick: Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: Yeah, so I th I think I mean this is really how I started to become interested in this. I think I had a very similar sort of a ha moment to what you described as your wife having, which is like duh, right? Like so I was sitting there going, noticing for myself that you know my I'm something was going on when I hit 40 and I said, hmm.
Ken Cook: Yeah. Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: Something's weird. And I realized I was probably entering perimenopause and I started to go through the science, you know, I went right into the science rabbit hole and started to understand what is happening. And as I was reading, as one does, and I started just reading about what's happening biologically, right? And it parallels.
Ken Cook: Yeah. Yeah.
Ken Cook: As one does.
Lauren Petrick: Exactly to what's happening in early life and in puberty, you have these huge biological shifts. You have these huge shifts in hormones. And we know that those things, when they're happening in puberty and prenatally and in early life, those are windows of susceptibility to environmental exposures, right? Because these environmental exposures, which a lot of them are endocrine disrupting chemicals, right? Or they induce inflammation or oxidative stress at these times in you know.
Ken Cook: Yes.
Lauren Petrick: know, in pre-natal, we know that if there's exposures to phthalates and parabens, they shift the programming for puberty, and you see later or earlier different changes in timelines of puberty outcomes. So we have those things happening and they've been established early life, puberty, right? that are these windows of susceptibility. So doesn't it make sense that Menopause is a window of susceptibility. Biologically it makes sense. I people just haven't studied it. And I think this is what really, you know, biologically it made sense. In terms of what we understand about environmental exposures, it makes sense. And now it's starting to put the literature together to show for some for some cases there's there's data that's supporting it. So I think this is important, important to continue looking into.
Ken Cook: Yeah, yeah.
Ken Cook: Yeah, and so i j just to sort of s sketch out w what we might know about the occurrence of or the coincidence, d are we seeing the this we have early onset puberty where, you know, girls are entering puberty at earlier and earlier ages, and especially the truth that's in the tale, there are some who are entering puberty very much earlier than we had suspected before. And those were some of the early indicators that something was going on and the environment is it's not the only, but it's one of the main things people are are investigating and concerned about. What's the s what's the situation with menopause? Are women entering menopause or perimenopause earlier? What are some of the other biological developments that you think might be associated with environmental exposures.
Lauren Petrick: So there are some papers that are looking that have shown associations with shifts in the onset of menopause. We're not seeing so some in some cases it could be earlier, in some cases it could be later. I think menopause onset is a tricky thing to measure because you don't actually know that you entered menopause until 12 months after you entered menopause. And so that you know it's 12 months after your last menstrual period, you can say, okay, I entered menopause. And it's it's it's a it's a hard thing to measure, and I don't think that we have good data
Ken Cook: Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: Right now the data doesn't suggest that there's a sort of global shift towards earlier or late menopause that you see in some, you know, some other diseases when you see, okay, we see increasing prevalence of early-onset cancer. And so we think that there's this link to environment. We're not seeing that with menopause yet, but I don't know whether that is because the measurements aren't there. They're not done.
Ken Cook: Right.
Ken Cook: Right. Right.
Lauren Petrick: Good enough for us to see, or if you know, the onset of menopause as a as a time point is the end all be all, right? There could be other outcomes. We do see consistent associations between phthalate exposure and decreased levels of some of the biomarkers linked with ovarian aging. So this is seems to be consistent. For
Ken Cook: Okay.
Ken Cook: And say a b say a bit about ovarian aging, say and why that's so important.
Lauren Petrick: Okay, yeah. So there's two main biomarkers of ovarian aging. One is AMH, which is anti malarian hormone, and it measures basically the functional ovarian reserve. It's a it's a hormone that you can measure in the blood. And basically it peaks when you're about up to about 25 or 26, and then it slowly declines, and as you get closer to menopause, it declines even faster until it becomes undetectable, undetectable levels, and it's released from the from the ovary. There's another one called antral follicle count, which is similar. It also measures ovarian reserve. But you need to measure it using a vaginal ultrasound. And so that's much harder to measure. So there's not as much data on that. But what they're what the studies have shown is that exposures to higher levels of phthalates are one of the compounds, they're seeing lower levels of AMH and AFC. And that's seen in multiple different studies in multiple different cohorts. So you're seeing sort of consistent associations with that. So that suggests that the sort of reproductive duration of the female reproductive system of the ovaries may be shortening, right? And that could have implications for onset of menopause and all of the downstream pathologies that are associated with that, right? Like increased cognitive decline, decreased bone strength, and all of the things that are linked with earlier onset of menopause.
Ken Cook: Yeah. Fa just that's j it's just so fascinating and you know, again, I just it's when I bring up topics like this, I don't know about you, but my dinner invitations have really fallen sh fallen off sharply. Because
Lauren Petrick: Ha ha.
Ken Cook: Either people think I'm gonna take a urine sample or I don't know what they think, but they but they're very careful what they eat around me and what they serve it in and so forth. But again, this is you know, when you think of the w to go back to the start of our conversation, the wide a array of chemical exposures and as you've just described, there's evidence for one sort of family of phthalates. These are chem chemicals that are commonly found as plasticizers and other purposes. They've they've been in cosmetics b f and for years and so forth. But i you begin to you really begin to wonder anew and it this hits me almost every morning when I wake up and one of my scientists sends me a note. That w we really don't have our arms around what's going on here, do we? I mean, d do you y you from the perch where you are, you must be able to wonder in great detail wh why we how what kind of shape we're in because of all these unknowns. And it and maybe some of the unknowns are not of great consequence. I d I don't mean to suggest for one minute that every a chemical found in a person is going to lead to a an adverse health count. That's never been our view. But our
Lauren Petrick: No worries, I'm glad it ha didn't happen on my end.
Ken Cook: Well, I was just what I was w what I was mentioning is you know, the it's it can seem overwhelming to people. And, you know, this is has been my life's work for many years and even I at some at some points I step back, you know, you you read about the nov the that we've reached the planetary limits of novel entities, the work that the Swedish group has been doing to try and f figure out where we are as a as a planet and with plastics and chemicals and pesticides and all the rest, they've they've concluded, well, you know, we the w we're way past where we should be in terms of inflicting these all this progress on the planet and the people who inhabit it. But how does it strike you, Lauren? w I mean right, I mean you got You know, you had this experience where you thought about your own you know, you're going through menopause, what that meant for you and you've got you know, I s I think you've mentioned you have kids. W how do you pr how do you process it? What w what w what I know what keeps you going is you have an intense scientific interest, but when you step back from the science, do you do you have these holy shit moments? What are we doing?
Lauren Petrick: Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: yeah.
Ken Cook: That's a technical that's a technical E d that's an EWG technical term. Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: Good, I'm gonna use it from now on. But so I do think that it can be incredibly overwhelming because we can't stop it. It's not that we can have no exposures. We live, we have to live, we keep living, right? We do the best to protect our children, we can't go crazy, right? I know when my children were born, of the things that I... My husband was not so thrilled about it, but I was like, we need organic mattresses. We need to get it. You know, I was trying, I was really into that at the time. And he's like, are you kidding me? so, you know, these debates that are happening at home to try to reduce our exposures. In the end, I think we compromised on some sort of, you know, covering, you know, we do what we can. There's, I think ultimately we... There are certain things that you can do that we know are sort of easy fixes to reduce some of your exposures depending on the types of chemicals like phthalates. I think it's pretty well known that we don't take plastic containers and heat our food in the microwave or in the oven, right, because that'll leach out a lot of plastics. That's a simple thing. We could transfer it to glass and put it in our microwave, right, to try to reduce exposures.
Ken Cook: Right. Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: I think sort of going fragrance free is a good way to reduce exposures. EWG has fantastic information on the website on products people can choose and ways that they can reduce different exposures. So at some times, I do, even, I have to put blinders on, right? Because we have to keep living, we have to keep enjoying life. I don't want to ever not go, you know, ever.
Ken Cook: Yeah, yeah.
Lauren Petrick: not go out to eat or enjoy the things around me. And I do love a good slice of pizza on a piece of wax paper like everyone else off the street. We're living. So we have to just do the best that we can do and try to make the best choices we can given what's available to us. Know there's a lot of places you can't get organic food. You can't get organic
Ken Cook: Right, of course.
Ken Cook: Yes, yes, yes. I confess, I'm right with you. Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: milk or other things and there's, you know, we just, yeah, exactly, Whether that's not access because it's not available or not access because it's beyond financial means. But so I think we're just trying to, everyone's just trying to do the best that they can to reduce exposures and we just keep, you know, trying to do the science to learn as much as we can and I think these
Ken Cook: Yeah. Or can't afford it. A lot of people can't afford it.
Lauren Petrick: met these this exposome concept right now which is really on a kick to really measure many more at the same time. I'm really excited about the promise of how we can think of these in the context of really living right and what are going to be the priority chemicals that we're going to focus on or the whether that's because of where you live or the culture that you're experiencing the types of
Ken Cook: Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: dishware that you use or other items to be able to zero in and hopefully affect policy that's going to help not only put all the burden on the individual to decide but also to have some legislation in place to help everyone. So I'm optimistic and at the same time I put blinders on so I don't know what that says.
Ken Cook: Right, right.
Ken Cook: Yeah, I I have that same split. You know, and y you know, I I s when we were when we were having our little boy who's now eighteen and you know, I found myself resenting going to these online databases to see what I should buy and not buy. And they were my databases. So so it you know, it's just
Lauren Petrick: Yeah.
Ken Cook: It's it's just a you know, an important it's it's so important to keep people feeling empowered, give them choices, you can reduce lots of exposures with without dramatic changes in your lifestyle. But the question that keeps rising up in my mind is, you know, when are we going to find traction and find the right models to follow to you know to bring the economy along with what science like your science and colleagues across the world looking at exposome science and metabolomics are discovering which is, you know, we we probably we probably would be better off with a simpler exposome. We'd probably if we could, we'd probably be better off i you know i understanding or beginning to understand what mixtures of these chemicals might do at the cellular level, much less beyond downstream to a health effect, we'd probably be better off if we did reduce exposures because we're not we're not sort of using risk assessments to eliminate these things very quickly, right? It's and f and now you know we're s in some ways we might even be going backwards. So w th that's that to me is the that to me is the mood swing that I go through. And but when I talk to scientists like you, I have to say
Lauren Petrick: Right.
Ken Cook: at you and Linda Birnbaum and Phil Landergan and Bruce Lamphere and s and so many other luminaries in the field. I'm I'm just v very encouraged that you know you're you're you're really digging in and trying to understand these real world exposures, what they might mean. And l you know, let's hope that consumers can make something of that. I think that's important as you point out and let's Let's hope that in the fullness of time first I think first industry has to kind of come around to a different understanding that we're not depositories. We're human beings. That there's something to be said for, you know, conserving our biological potential and we wouldn't want that to be compromised by someone's cleaning ingredient or something that we had on our on s you know, on
Lauren Petrick: Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: Yeah.
Ken Cook: on a personal care product or floss, right?
Lauren Petrick: Yes, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's very hard. Mean, there's a lot of choices that I don't know if they're not even choices. You I think about things like my daughter's a preteen and she's following all the stuff on the internet and sees all these. Yes, she sees.
Ken Cook: TikTok. She's on TikTok. Yes.
Lauren Petrick: I know and she's seeing all these products and endless products and facial creams and you know I'm feeling her desire to be a teenager and want fragrances and all of this excitement and I'm being torn with knowing you know what these probably aren't very good for her and doing that balance and it's unfair. It is unfair. It's unfair for her. It's unfair for me that we have to struggle like this. So ultimately I agree with you.
Ken Cook: Yes.
Ken Cook: Yeah.
Lauren Petrick: get these manufacturers to make these choices, and if it's economical for them and we're in a system that promotes that in some way, this would be ideal. Exactly.
Ken Cook: Rewards them, yeah. Yeah. Well, you've been very generous with your time. Let me j can if I just if you'll give me one more question and this is the you know, kind of a really out there, but so when you look at the progress that's been made, and again you I consider you at the cutting edge of these conjoined fields of the exposome and metabolomics, w where do you think where do you think the discovery path will take us? in the foreseeable future, say ne the next five or ten years, w what are we going to be likely learning if you had to if you had to put a bet?
Ken Cook: It's not as bad as 60 Minutes. I'm not I'm not I it's not like a hostile 60 Minutes interview. You're g you'll be fine. I'm just curious.
Lauren Petrick: I don't know, we're gonna be learning a lot.
Lauren Petrick: Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Mean, I think this, I think we're going to be, I think that the lamppost is gonna be spreading. I think that in terms of the class of the chemicals that we're looking at, we're going to see that it's bigger than what we've been looking at before. That there's co-exposures that are happening that we're not tracking and some of those co-exposures may be worse.
Ken Cook: what a great metaphor.
Lauren Petrick: in terms of health effects than what we've been studying or what's coming out. So I think that's probably where these technologies are allowing us to find them. So that's what I would say.
Ken Cook: Well, it's again like as we say at EWG, it's it's it's refreshing to study the real world instead of one chemical at a time and one health effect at a time. And what you're doing is of course stepping back from that model, which is what guides our regulatory system now, to try and see how we might improve it and have a better understanding of what we're really doing to ourselves. And I'm I'm so grateful for all of your work. Thank you for joining today. And I'm I'll keep I'll keep reading and the next time you have another amazing study like your review of what's going on with with menopausal women and environmental exposures, I'll I'll I'll ring you up again if I can because I love learning from you.
Lauren Petrick: Absolutely, this was fantastic. Thank you so much, Ken. This has been an absolute pleasure talking with you. So thank you for having me here. All right. Thank you.
Ken Cook: All right. Keep at it, Professor. Thank you.