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DocMaertens

@toxicological.bsky.social
513 followers 1.6K following 230 posts

Toxicologist, systems biologist. Bringing bioinformatics to environmental health. Interested in using computational toxicology to design safer chemicals? There’s a book for that! www.amazon.com/Green-Toxicology-Mak…

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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
They are using them for science! Teeth are actually a great record of metal exposures and that way the Tooth Fairy can do biomarker studies.
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Laurie! Live! @laurie-merrell.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
hilariously shady content from Pew this Fourth of July
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Yep. People disowned their kids for being gay. I remember realizing a gay couple I knew couldn’t hug each other goodbye at the airport because same sex PDA was not tolerated then.
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Daniel S. Goldberg @profgoldberg.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Just for the record, I've worked on stigma, inequalities, and pain for 20 years, & the evidence is utterly overwhelming that women are vastly less likely to have their pain adequately diagnosed and treated than men. And of course WoC are less likely than white women. Etc. cc @maybell.bsky.social
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Really appreciate all your books!
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
As someone who lives near the Supreme Court I have dutifully sent bad vibes their way every time I pass by. I regret that I have but two birds to give to my country.
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Free DC @freedcproject.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
But yesterday, soldiers from the Minnesota National Guard arrived in DC to aid and abet Trump's immoral and illegal occupation of the capital city.
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D. Scott Pumpkins 🎃🏳️‍🌈 @dslundberg.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
City: Washington, DC I only need one word: Statehood
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Janne M. Korhonen @jmkorhonen.fi · 24/06/2026
There are words for that and they are “political” and “prisoner.”
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Same! My excuse was that absent mindedness is an occupational hazard of being an academic.
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Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
This is IMHO extremely important Keep an eye out—other government departments will hopefully follow🤞 The right-wing disinformation, violence, & abuse of women & children on X led the Attorney General to take his office OFF that Nazi cesspit Hermer himself has suffered grotesque antisemitism
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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
at the end, @professormusgrave.bsky.social says future students will ask "why?" And I'm afraid that we'll have to tell them the answer is that a plurality of the American people wanted it to be 2019 again and thought nothing Trump did would impact them. Ditto to institutions that enabled him
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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Also, the JCPOA was an actual painstakingly negotiated, detailed, actual international agreement, signed by 🇬🇧, 🇩🇪, 🇫🇷, 🇷🇺, & 🇨🇳alongside 🇺🇸, & 🇮🇷. We don’t even know if this is real, & this administration has exactly zero credibility to make agreements right now, even if they exist.
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Indeed! And as long as you bicycle everywhere it doesn’t appear to cause obesity!
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Yeah also people who put mayonnaise on fries should not be casting stones
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
In case we had any doubt
lemonde.fr
Elon Musk's role was 'instrumental' in the Belfast riots, researchers say
The newly crowned world's first trillionaire is once again facing criticism over the violent narratives he amplified on his platform X.
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🇵🇸Tim Henke (tɪm 'ɦɛŋ.kə) @timhenke.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
If any future student of history wishes to learn what our era was like, they simply need to know that there was less than a year between Elon becoming a historic mass murderer and officially becoming the world's first trillionaire
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Don’t forget the Dutch!
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 10/06/2026
Twitter/X is an enormous national security threat on a global scale, and a lot more nations need to grow a spine and start blocking it (and taking other active, aggressive measures).
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
“How our fear of poisons poisoned our politics”. Also, did you know poisoning is feminine-coded?
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Amesh Adalja @ameshaa.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
In this @hannamwebster.bsky.social piece I’m quoted about how vaccination rates are a key component of school safety that should be widely publicized and also how it’s not suprising to see 60+ measles cases in PA as the virus has re-established endemicity. www.post-gazette.com/news/health/...
post-gazette.com
Amid a measles resurgence, Pennsylvania leaders say plunging vaccine rates in thousands of schools will be made public
As measles cases in Pennsylvania spike to levels not seen in decades, state officials say they will disclose the vaccination rates in classrooms across...
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 10/06/2026
It's hard to be excited about the Artemis III mission announcements when the CEO of the company making one of the mission's rockets has spent his week inciting racial violence via his personal social media platform.
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Exactly - unless you can define what chemicals or micronutrients etc are causing specific health effects, this is all correlation not causation. And scientists should know better!
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
reminder that the last time trump was at madison square garden was for a literal nazi rally
newrepublic.com
Trump’s Madison Square Garden Event Was a Full Nazi Rally
Donald Trump’s rally was rife with Nazi and Nazi-adjacent language and imagery.
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Yeah, for sure, you really don’t want to store any food surplus. . .because of rats. (also, no rodent problem = no domesticated cats. So I’m going to call it a win based on that alone.)
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Read this whole piece.
Mamuka spent 119 days in detention, about four months, but under normal circumstances, he should have been released. He was arrested on February 5 in Alabama, where he was detained for five days, then moved to Winn where he spent another 114 days before dying in custody. Unless something changed between the middle of March and early June, he did not have a final removal order so ICE couldn't move him-instead, Mamuka had a case pending before an immigration judge this entire time, and may have still been waiting on a final hearing when he passed. He was classified as the lowest risk level in detention, he had no mandatory detention flag, he was not a known terrorist or a suspected gang member (problematic as those categories are, and he never had a prior detainer, so it's unlikely that he ever had a run-in with police.All of these factors, combined with the nature of his arrest, support a straightforward conclusion that he should not have been in detention in the first place. Using the national ICE detention average daily rate of $150, the US taxpayer spent $17,850 detaining this single person without any evidence that it served the interests of public safety or national security.
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Agreed. Based on my experience in public health - sure, of course there are things we could do better, things which should be different. But the people asking “How did public health cause this crisis?” are basically asking “What did you do to make him hit you?”
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Yep, same!
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Steven Kahn @sekahn.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
I grew up in apartheid S Africa, where muzzling of speech and encroachment on academic freedom were the norm. I came to the USA to pursue a career in science. I never thought that at this stage of my career, I would ever experience my youth again. #StandUpForScience #ADA #ADA2026
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Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
To be absolutely clear in the current environment, the bias identified here was a bias for white lead investigators and also for topics that are favored by white investigators, regardless of the lead investigator’s race.
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
I always got the impression (from the vantage of the science department) that the problem was indeed that very bad relativistic claims developed a certain cache amongst people for whom it was useful. Or more precisely, the philosophical scholarship was not the problem but the cheap popularization?
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 06/06/2026
Remember the current NIH director going on about protecting researchers from government censorship? Today his people called the police in to forcibly remove my colleagues from their own society meeting for sharing an editorial published in their flagship journal that was critical of him. Gift link
nytimes.com
Police Remove Diabetes Experts From Conference for Distributing Critique of Trump Administration
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Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
The new NIH policy requiring co-authorships with foreign scientists to be reported seems like an opportunity for a mass protest-by-cooperation: if each of us requested permission for each of our co-authorships (1 email per ms), the NIH would be deluged with these and it would convey how absurd it is
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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
I work on global ocean conservation policy. I don’t know if it’s possible to do that without collaboration with foreign experts. It’s definitely not possible to do it well.
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Danielle R. Snowflack, Ph.D. @drsnowflack.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
www.capitalweather.com Found it and sent some bucks.
capitalweather.com
Capital Weather
Trusted D.C.-area weather forecasts, storm coverage, climate reporting and analysis from the Capital Weather meteorologists
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liberation psychiatrist @libpsych.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
The first Memorial Day dates to 1865 when members of Black churches re-buried Union soldiers from a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp to individual grave sites. Memory of the event was later suppressed. apnews.com/31e1623c7565...
apnews.com
Charleston can lay a claim to 1st Memorial Day
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — The city that plunged the nation into its bloodiest conflict can also lay a claim to holding the first Memorial Day observance honoring the dead from the Civil War. In a little...
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Amesh Adalja @ameshaa.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
“Twenty of those cases are part of an ongoing outbreak that started in Lebanon County over the past month and has spread to three other counties: Berks, Dauphin and Lancaster.” www.post-gazette.com/news/health/...
post-gazette.com
Measles cases continue to spread in Pa., hitting the highest number since 1991
As vaccination rates plummet in hundreds of schools across Pennsylvania, state health officials say 32 cases of measles have been reported so far...
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Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
100% worth your 63 seconds if you have my reading speed. sinceyouarrived.world/taken
sinceyouarrived.world
taken.
A web page that tells you what your browser gave away the moment you arrived. No login, no form, no permission. Most pages do this. None of them tell you.
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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
“Dr. Antaki, a biomedical engineer, had been building an artificial heart for babies and young children, a pump the size of a AA battery, and he was getting close. But with his research grants stopped, Dr. Antaki slowly drained his lab’s rainy day funds, and he was forced to lay off all his staff.”
nytimes.com
How a Funding Pause Derailed an Artificial Heart for Babies
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Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 18/05/2026
Also the next somebody says reparations for black people is a ridiculous idea, remind them that we have a reparations program for trying to overthrow the government
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Bill Madden @maddenifico.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
The most accurate portrayal of the pro-Jim Crow, white nationalist Roberts Supreme Court I've seen yet.
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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
“Let me start with what worked…the part of the story most Americans do not know. The Nebraska biocontainment unit now holding our returning passengers is a Level 1 Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Center… the highest tier of a national network built specifically for moments like this.”
statnews.com
The hantavirus is a wake-up call. Will the Trump administration answer it?
Arriving in the isolation ward of a biocontainment hospital is an unsettling, scary experience. In 2014, I spent 19 days in one while being treated for
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Sarah Lawton @sarahelawton.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Happy Frances Perkins feast day (Episcopal Church calendar, May 13)! Witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, later FDR’s Labor Secretary; she wrote the Social Security Act in her church’s rectory kitchen. She pushed to admit Jewish refugees. Known as FDR’s conscience and author of the New Deal. ⚓️
Photograph of Frances Perkins in black and white; she is wearing a hat and fur stole in the style of the 1930s and looking directly at the camera with a determined look and slight close-mouthed smile.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 11/05/2026
Look, even this level of idiocy is not reason to panic. It just reemphasizes the point here:
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
How Markets Fail by John Cassidy is a good macro level view and very readable
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 10/05/2026
When Rubio abruptly halted foreign aid last year, cleanup crews in Vietnam were forced to abandon one of the largest chemical spills in the world for weeks. Left exposed: open pits of soil contaminated with dioxin, the deadly byproduct of Agent Orange. From Pulitzer finalist “The End of Aid”:
propublica.org
Trump Halted an Agent Orange Cleanup. That Puts Hundreds of Thousands at Risk for Poisoning.
Diplomats in Vietnam warned Washington that halting USAID’s efforts to clean up the massive deposit of postwar pesticides would be a catastrophe for public health and relations with a key strategic pa...
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Adam Schwarz @adamjschwarz.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Zelensky has issued a presidential decree “allowing” Russia to hold its annual Victory Day parade in Moscow. The decree provides exact coordinates of the Red Square that shall be excluded from the list of Ukrainian strike targets. Phenomenal power play.
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Some people just have very bad metabolic wiring, and there probably are a few kids who would benefit from GLP-1. I don’t think there’s a huge rush to prescribe them to every kid who looks a bit overweight. This feels a lot more like a moral panic vs serious public health concern.
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DocMaertens @toxicological.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
I am hoping to pitch a pop sci book soon and curious about your experience - any advice?
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Mike the Mad Biologist and Trump's Press Corps Approver @mikethemadbiol.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
absolutely, and it's because we lack statehood. I realize, for obvious reasons, that most people view D.C. statehood in terms of 2 (almost certainly) Democratic senate seats, but the lack of self-governance is a real problem. Imagine if Congress had a de facto line item veto over your state budget.
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