Along the not always friendly border between science and science policy, Tracey Woodruff has managed to build a career crossing back and forth between both worlds, influencing both policy development and clinical practice.
As a recently appointed professor of Epidemiology and Population Health at Stanford University, Woodruff brings to the job experience as a former senior scientist and policy adviser at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as Professor and Director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at UCSF.
Piedmonters may know Woodruff as a former chair of the city’s Climate Action Task Force, where she led a team in recommending ways for the city to reduce greenhouse emissions. But her work at UCSF and the EPA have led her to grapple with a larger but only sporadically studied problem: the impact of toxic chemicals in our air and water, and what sorts of new policies and clinical practices are called for to remedy it.
“Government has done little to investigate some of these very important questions,” she says.
Woodruff describes her new work portfolio at Stanford as “continuing our research into populations that are most susceptible to toxic contaminants, and who suffer higher exposures to toxic pollutants, whether because of where they live, during pregnancy or childhood. But at Stanford we are broadening our focus to look at the whole of life span, across all life stages.”
Two areas of primary interest for Woodruff are first, examining the dramatic surge in the incidence of Parkinsonism and Alzheimer’s disease, both incurable central nervous system illnesses. Second is how these two diseases and other chronic illnesses may be connected to the explosion of microplastics and industrial toxins in our environment. “We are expanding our work to include plastics and pesticides,” Woodruff says. “For instance, we’re looking at the pesticide paraquat as a contributor to Parkinson’s, as well as how microplastics play a role in chronic illnesses.”
Woodruff’s research has found that microplastics, invisible to the human eye and small enough to be absorbed through the skin, have become a virtually inescapable presence in our environment, showing up in our lungs, bloodstreams, and digestive systems. And they come from surprising sources. “For example, one big source comes from automobile tire wear, which releases microscopic particles into the air that we all breathe in,” Woodruff explains.
A major challenge in ridding the environment of harmful plastics is that they are a key part of many large-scale fossil fuel and industrial processes. Which means they will not go away without a political fight. From the millions of plastic to-go boxes distributed by fast-food restaurants to the billions of single-use water and soft drink bottles manufactured each year, Woodruff believes that plastics pose a greater public health threat than is generally understood.
The fossil fuel industry’s connection to plastics (petroleum is essential in plastics production) suggests that strong government regulation is needed to reduce the flow of toxins into our environment. But currently, there isn’t much good news to report. “Plastic production has doubled since 2008,” says Woodruff. “The advent of fracking has allowed more fossil fuel to be extracted from the ground and then turned into plastics.”
On the policy side, Woodruff says, in reaction to some states and nations beginning to transition away from fossil fuels in response to policy changes that address climate change, fossil fuel giants have been taking steps to increase plastic production globally. “They are converting fossil fuel production into plastic production,” says Woodruff. “You’ll hear a lot of claims about recycling but only 5% of plastic can be recycled, so a lot of it ends up as waste. Fossil fuel companies may say they have ways to recycle plastic by burning it, but burning it releases microplastics into the air. So, while research is important, we also need government to step in.”