Toxic environmental chemicals: the role of reproductive health professionals in preventing harmful exposures.

Every pregnant woman in the United States is exposed to many and varied environmental chemicals. Rapidly accumulating scientific evidence documents that widespread exposure to environmental chemicals at levels that are encountered in daily life can impact reproductive and developmental health adversely. Preconception and prenatal exposure to environmental chemicals are of particular importance because they may have a profound and lasting impact on health across the life course.

Reproductive health and the industrialized food system: a point of intervention for health policy.

What food is produced, and how, can have a critical impact on human nutrition and the environment, which in turn are key drivers of healthy human reproduction and development. The US food production system yields a large volume of food that is relatively low in cost for consumers but is often high in calories and low in nutritional value. In this article we examine the evidence that intensive use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, hormones, antibiotics, and fossil fuel in food production, as well as chemicals in food packaging, are potentially harmful to human reproductive and developmental health.