Shanna H Swan PHD is a Professor in Environmental Medicine and Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Director for the Centre of Epideomiology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. From 1981 to 1998 she served as the Chief of Reproductive Epidemology at the California Department of Health Services. For over twenty years Shanna H Swan has worked to understand the threats posed by chemicals to the environment and health, and is not afraid to investigate these threats using new and unique modes of study. Her work pays particular attention to the chemicals that can disrupt hormones, such as phthalates. At the University of Rochester she is working with epidemiologists, biostatisticians, toxicologists, geneticists and systems biologists, to evaluate the risks from such chemicals, even if the effects are subtle.
Work featured in the International Journal of Andrology and was noted in the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.
Phthalates are chemicals which mimic the female hormone oestrogen. Such chemicals are found in plastics such as PVC shower curtains and vinyl flooring and Swan investigated into their effects on hormones. This study compared phthalate concentration in the urine of pregnant women urine to whether their children's play habits were typically masculine or feminine at the age of four to seven. The research found that higher concentrations of certain phthalate chemicals di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate DEHP and dibutyl phthalate DBP can affect play behaviour. Particularly when these chemicals were found in expectant mothers' urine, their sons were likely to exhibit less masculine behaviour.