Intro

BIOCIDES ARE COMING FOR YOU. 

Find out what they are, what the benefits and harms they have, and what we can do to control their use in consumer products. 

This was a fascinating, wide-ranging discussion on the use of agents that can affect the human/animal microbiome and environmental microbes, and the problems with trying to regulate them (in the UK at least). Hope you enjoy it. 

Bios: 

Natalie Bennett has been a Green Party representative in the UK House of Lords for six years, after being leader of the England & Wales Party from 2012-2016. Her first degree - from the University of Sydney - was in agricultural science, and she can get very geeky about soils; she got tardigrades into Hansard (the parliamentary record) for the first time ever in her maiden speech. Her Consumer Products (Control of Biocides) Bill was introduced to the House in January 2025. Her first book is Change Everything: How We Can Rethink, Repair and Rebuild Society, and her second (Green Thinking Unlearning Outdated Ideas in Science, Economics and Politics) will be out from Routledge next April. 

Anastasia “Tash” Theodosiou is an Academic Clinical Lecturer at the University of Glasgow and a Specialty Registrar in Microbiology & Infectious Diseases. Her research explores how the microbiome shapes health and disease, with a particular focus on early life; her PhD produced the world’s first human challenge study performed in pregnancy. She also coined the term microbiotoxicity, a framework for recognising the unintended impacts of antimicrobial products on the microbiome, and is a passionate advocate for embedding microbiome stewardship into clinical practice, prescribing, and policy.

Jame is a podcaster. He works for the NHS on occasion. 

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