Anatomy and pregnancy

[em@msu]

I am starting medical school and am 6 months pregnant. My doctor said it will be okay to take the anatomy lab and wear a special mask, but I am concerned about the risk with all the chemicals. Has anyone had experience with this?

Feel free to email me

[rockfever]

hi! did someone from envrionmental saftey explaint he ocmponents of the solution used? and have you talked to them about it? the solution used at evms is call Virginia solution or something which sounds like a verywatered down formaldehyde. the person from environmental saftey did say that this particular solution was safe for pregnancy but you should talk to someone from envrionmental safety at your school.

[erin-the-red]

my husband and i were curious about the same thing, having the *plan* to conceive this fall and baby next summer…

the literature is scarce and conflicting (even to our family doc.), so… i made a bunch of calls to other medical schools to inquire about their policy on preg. women in the lab. out of about 10 schools, one had an organic solvents policy prohibiting women from being in lab…

i decided to wear a mask in lab to filter out the bulk of the fumes *just in case* and i double glove. we came to the conclusion that many, many women have been pregnant around formalin and had beautiful perfect babies (a number of them post here :)and the chances of formalin affecting our baby were probably small…

we DID talk to a developmental anatomist, though, who felt differently and suggested that we do not take ANY potential risks and simply postpone med. school if we wanted to have a baby.

there are more *hard science* opinions on this subject in some earlier posts on the subject… see if you pull up some old threads on the topic…

good luck!… erin

[Donna]

Can you find out if your school has tested the environment? We had a new lab put in for anatomy, with ultra suction-y vents (loud) and they told us they actually had people walking around with particle counters for whatever potential substances might be harmful to the fetus. Supposedly, everything was waaay below toxicicity. I know a handful of women who had perfectly healthy babies and wore masks just as a precaution.

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