Professor

Human-sourced chemicals are changing the world. While individual people often take limited regimens of specific drugs, the environment receiving our wastewater receives all of our drugs, all of the time. There are at least two major concerns in this. First, what are complex mixtures of synthetic chemicals doing to plants and animals? Second, what is the ingestion of contaminated plants and animals doing to humans? I will use decades of studies on wastewater treatment chemical release in conjunction with the findings of the impacts of chemicals on model and non-model animals to make a case that we are changing the very nature of life. I will draw upon examples ranging from the molecular to the population, and focus on how we are changing the personalities of diverse animals.