There are no news from my article but this: Springer was at least fast enough to send me an invoice of 2.433,55 EUR! That's the amount of money necessary to retain the copyright of my text and get the fabulous number of 25 offprints.

By the way: I really like the concept of open access. Scientific work should be open to anyone, but to what price?! 2.000,- EUR to get open access to a text I wrote by myself, I submitted by myself, I edited by myself after peer review (which is also a gratis service of scientists to the publisher)? Springer calls that Open Choice, I'd call it hell of a good way to make money!



Just run a stupidinconvenient electronic system for article management, find some desperate scientists who will write articles and some others who do the review work, hire a layouter who is able to create pdf-files and you may start earning money.

Most of the time it will be tax payers money you earn. And if you think about it, it's paradox: public pays us to do research and in the end public pays again to read, what we did with their money! Sometime I think about starting an internet based open access journal. It's the only way to escape this vicious circle.

Meanwhile, I personally have some profits from paying to Springer (though I don't even know, where to organize the money for the bill from): I'm now an official member of the Springer online journal contributer community! That doesn't only provide me with a discount of 33% on Springer books but with an electronic system that keeps sending me thousands of emails again!

Wow, today's really the day for covering the press coverage: Fast Company published an excellent article on - guess what - "The Real Story behind Bisphenol A".


Photograph by Nigel Cox.

The article nicely unscrambles the influence of the chemical industry and their lobbyists on the regulation of chemicals, and once more demonstrates that BPA is a text book example, not only in toxicology but also in political sciences!

By pure coincidence, I received the letter of the Weinberg Group, Fast Company is refering to. You may download it here: Weinberg-Group (pdf, 352 KB)

What really scares me is the modality in which industry tries to discredit scientists. May that also happen to me and my work on plastic bottles? We'll see! Meanwhile: read Fast Company!

After beeing a major issue in the North American media, the Endocrine Disruptor Bisphenol A (BPA) finally gathers attention in Germany. In September 2008 Report München, a major investigative TV-magazine, covers the story of the plastic component BPA.

In January there was a similar report on hr-Fernsehen, a regional TV station in the state of Hesse. The story was also covered by Die ZEIT, the major weekly newspaper in Germany. Christian Heinrich asks "Gefahr aus der Babyflasche?" (Danger from baby bottles?).

I guess, these reports are motivated by the BPA ban proposed by Health Canada and the subsequent public debate in Canada and the USA.

In a quite nice way they disclose the strange German dichotomy in the official opinion on BPA: The responsible agency, the Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung (BfR, Federal Institute for Riskassessment), calls Bisphenol A safe and even supported the elevation the tolerable daily intake from 0.01 to 0.05 mg/kg bodyweight by the EFSA.

Although not directly involved in consumer health matters the Umweltbundesamt (UBA, federal Environmental Protection Agency) strongly opposes the BfR policy by advising parents not to use plastic bottles containing BPA.

the ESS, the electronic submission system, or whatever publishers call their systems where you're supposed to upload your manuscripts, is the natural opponent of the scientist. At least "my" ESS used to be. Promising "Quality, Rapidity, Transparency" it gave me a really hard time, when I tried to put in my manuscript.



As it wasn't hard enough to write a scientific article, publishers push you to the border of your resilience by using the most inconvenient online systems I've ever seen. When I submitted my abstract, the ess was clever enough to save three different copies of it. Which I didn't notice at all. But then the ESS started sending me automated e-mails, reminding me that some (!) of my submitted abstracts are incomplete. And yes: it's a real communicative system sending me messages every day, informing me about this and that and sometimes even about the status of my manuscript.

First I found that kind of annoying but after some mails I got used to it. It's almost like getting holiday mail from friend traveling abroad: You don't pay too much attention but you're pleased to hear from them...

But then something happened to my ESS: It stopped talking to me! Shortly after my manuscript was accepted for publication the ESS didn't want to talk to me anymore! That was in December and the last message I got was this:

Dear Author,

We are happy to let you know that the revised version of your above noted paper has been accepted for publication. You will receive the pre-layouted paper within a period of 7 days.

Best regards,
Submission Editor

That doesn't sound like a good-by-message to me! And when the 7 days deadline elapsed I was worried. Since then I'm checking the ESS every day, at least once, but the only thing I get is the pleasant message that I made it, I passed the review process, I succeeded.

I only have to wait for the layout and log on to the ESS once a day. It feels like being deserted by a friend. Should I call the publisher and ask if everything's all right with my dear ESS?

All things are from water and all things are resolved into water.

Greek natural philosopher Thales (625–547 BC) says and captures my (scientific) heart, since water is one of my favorite research objects. Most of my lucid moments I spend doing experiments with water. To be precise: I'm working with bottled mineral water to find out whether really all things resolve in water.

I'm involved in the research field of endocrine disruption, that is situated in between the traditional areas of toxicology, epidemiology, medicine, chemistry and ecology. It's dealing with the effects of man-made chemicals on the (reproductive) health of humans or wildlife.

So-called Endocrine Disruptors, like the notorious Bisphenol A, are synthetic chemicals that interfere with the hormonal signaling in our bodies. Most of the scientists working with Endocrine Disruptors believe that these chemicals therefore cause adverse health effects on reproductive, developmental and even neuronal functions.

I'm with them. But that's not why I started this blog. As I said, I did some studies on mineral water, that is (at least in Europe) nowadays very popular to carry around and drink everywhere. Doing my master thesis at university I was playing around with a simple in vitro system to test for hormonal activity caused by estrogens or estrogen-like compounds.

I modified the experimental design to test water samples and started testing the mineral water I was drinking at that time. It was a fun-experiment. I didn't expect to find anything, but guess what: I detected a strong estrogenic activity in my mineral water (which I stopped drinking immediately, as you might understand).

Since that first experiment, I tested dozens of different mineral waters in hundreds of experiments. The results are astonishing (some might say frightening): Most of the bottled mineral waters I tested are contaminated with synthetic estrogens. Moreover we found evidence that the hormonal contamination is coming from the plastic bottles. Thales is right: all things are resolved in water, especially things leaching from plastic packagings!

Collecting all these data, I'm on the way to publish these results. That's why I'm blogging now. The contamination of a basic thing like drinking water with environmental estrogens is of special interest for public health. I know that my data may cause public concern. And scientific controversy.

With this blog, I want to illustrate my private point of view concerning endocrine disruption in general and my work on mineral water in particular. Moreover I want to take a critical look on how public is dealing with the topic. Let's follow the thrilling way of a debate between public and science, uncertainty and knowledge, precaution and profit. Thales would like it for sure!