Filed under: News
By Kerry Grens
NEW YORK | Fri Jan 13, 2012 12:20pm EST
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Nurses who worked with chemotherapy drugs or sterilizing chemicals were twice as likely to have a miscarriage as their colleagues who didn’t handle these materials, in a new study.
Lead author Christina Lawson, a researcher at the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), said she was not too surprised that exposure to certain chemicals would be tied to lost pregnancies.
“What surprised me the most was that (chemotherapy) drugs are something we’ve been trying to educate nurses on, about the hazards, and we’re still finding exposures during the first trimester,” Lawson told Reuters Health.
Because chemotherapy drugs typically target rapidly dividing cells, such as those in a tumor — or a fetus, they have been a concern for pregnant women who come into contact with them, Lawson said.
Not all previous research has agreed on whether nurses’ exposures at work are tied to more miscarriages, though.
Read further at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/13/us-nurses-miscarriages-idUSTRE80C1N720120113
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