Parental hazards, effects

Parental Hazards (Effects). For assessment of reproductive and developmental risk, parental hazards, both paternal and maternal, must be identified and evaluated. Parental hazards can be expressed as altered nutritional state, functional impairment, and systemic toxicity. Because of possible indirect affects, knowledge and evaluation of non-reproductive/non-developmental toxicity studies are useful. This information is available by examination of subchronic and chronic toxicity studies. 

Irene Wilkenfeld is an environmental health consultant, lecturer and writer specializing in issues related to the sick school syndrome. Her consulting company provides in-service training workshops for school districts, educating them about the myriad health hazards in schools and offering efficacious and cost-effective options to detoxify schools. Wilkenfeld also offers phone consultations and personalized research reports to help students, parents and teachers advocate for change and win accommodations. Wilkenfeld is passionate that every school must be a citadel of safety. 

Primary degradation produces organic derivatives of a contaminant. The resulting one or more products exhibit their own properties, reactivities, fates, and effects. The metabolites may be either less toxic (detoxification) or even more hazardous than the parent compound (toxification). 

Triple quadrupole mass spectrometry can provide rapid screening of complex mixtures for specific compounds and can be used to analyze for compounds that cannot routinely be analyzed by GC/MS. In addition, structural information can be obtained for certain types of compounds since in collision-induced dissociations the fragments are likely to show the structual differences of the parent compounds. Complex mixtures have been analyzed by this technique by introducing the sample directly into the heated sample port of the instrument with little or no sample pretreatment. Triple quadrupole mass spectrometry promises to be a useful, cost-effective, and practical advanced technique for environmental analysis, particularly when applied to hazardous waste problems. 

Occupational exposure to neurotoxic chemicals before and after conception has been reported to produce a wide range of adverse effects on reproduction. Studies in the United States and Europe have shown increased risk of congenital malformations and reductions in birth weight among infants born to parents living near hazardous... 

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