From wshu authored by Bill Buchner:

“A Long Island native will set sail across the Atlantic Ocean in October with an all-female crew of 11 to study the impact that plastic pollutants have on women’s health.

Erica Cirino is an environmental journalist and has done research on plastics at Roskilde University in Copenhagen, Denmark. She will join the second leg of an all-women sailing voyage across the world called eXXpedition.

She will climb aboard in Azores and sail to Antigua next month.

Erica, thank you for joining All Things Considered. Why is it an all-female crew? 

So, typically in the field of science, women have been underrepresented in terms of getting jobs and also in terms of studying women’s health. The typical human subject that is studied in many scientific papers about toxicity and health is a 150-pound male. And so that kind of reference point doesn’t really work when trying to understand how toxins impact a woman’s body. So this trip is kind of bringing attention to that and also hopefully uncovering some new information that we can use.”

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