Barbara Demeneix is a biologist and professor at the National Natural History Museum in Paris. She invented an original and innovative technology that allows to identify environmental pollutants and was awarded the CNRS Innovation Medal. She is the author of Cocktail toxique. Comment les perturbateurs endocriniens empoisonnent notre cerveau (Odile Jacob, 2017).

It is a well-known fact that fossil fuels, and their emission of greenhouse gases, are the direct cause of global warming. What is less well-known, is that they are also the source of two other major threats to humanity: the loss biodiversity and chemical pollution, which affect our health and the environment.
Barbara Demeneix is internationally recognised for her work on thyroid hormones and endocrine disruptors and has decided to raise the alarm: pesticides and fertilisers, as well as plastic, are derived from the petrochemical industry and, as such, contribute indirectly to global warming. They contaminate the water, the soil, our food and the air that we breathe. And trying to destroy them only emits more carbon dioxide or methane. In other words, it’s a vicious cycle because the threats are interdependent and the effects cumulative.
However, on the flip side, Barbara Demeneix points out that we can make these cycles virtuous, drastically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels for the economy, develop a form of agriculture that is less dependent on petrochemicals and protect the climate, as well as our health and biodiversity. So, hope is not lost… As long as we act now!