The 12th Gordon Research Conference on Environmental Endocrine Disruptors was held in Newry, Maine (USA) on July 19-24, at the Jordan Hotel at Sunday River.

This is one of the most relevant international conference on the issue of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, combining current evidences from many different research areas: from the effects of environmental endocrine disruptors in wildlife and humans, to the effects beyond classical targets, including long-lasting effects on metabolism, development, cognition, behavior; from the social, political, and cultural determinants of risk assessment to perspective studies on reducing global exposure and many more.

Professor Paola Palanza, Project leader of the Life-MILCH project, attended the Conference as invited speaker. Prof. Palanza illustrated the Life-MILCH project design, the goals achieved so far and the challenging mission of the project.

Life-MILCH aims at prioritizing infants’ health and wellbeing, by improving the quality of the environment surrounding the mother-infant dyad, in order to reduce the negative impact of environmental Endocrine Disruptors Chemicals (EDCs) exposure. The project focuses on mothers and babies, breastfeeding (or formula feeding) and infant development in their first year of life.

Prof. Palanza outlined the connection between EDCs’ exposure and infant development, an important and sensitive issue addressed by the Life-MILCH research studies. The title of the talk was “Lowering the impact of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals on the Mother-Infant Dyad: the Life MILCH project”. Prof. Palanza highlights that “negative effects from EDCs’ exposure have been demonstrated both in experimental models and epidemiological studies. The endocrine disrupting potential of chemicals on human populations and their underlying mechanisms are difficult to control and still not fully understood. Nevertheless, recent scientific evidences suggest a negative impact on infants, specifically on neurodevelopment, stress response, reproductive maturation, metabolism regulation and other growth parameters”.

How the EDCs exposure can be reduced or at least, adjusted? "One of the possibilities is raising the costumers’ awareness on purchased goods and increasing the pressure on th relative market. Of course, the most incisive action should be reducing the upstream production of these chemicals and their reckless release in the environment". The conference talk aroused considerable interest in the scientific community attending the Gordon Conference, looking forward to seeing at the results of this ambitious project involving three different institutions: Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria in Parma, Ausl-IRCCS in Reggio-Emilia and Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria in Cagliari. The PeptLab Laboratory at the University of Florence is analyzing for the presence of EDCs.all the biological samples of the mother–infant dyads involved