A study indicates the paternal professions that present risk for children
Congenital malformations in children are closely related to the type of work performed by the father, according to a study published in the medical journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Previous investigations had already warned of the risks generated by certain trades at the time of procreation. However, these were incomplete studies, while in order to obtain larger samples they tended to catalog very different kinds of diseases and occupations in the same way, which distorted the results.
The present investigation has been made analyzing the labor profile of 1000 parents who had had children born between 1997 and 2004, with congenital malformations and with another 4000 parents whose children had come to the world without problems.
Paternal employments were cataloged in 63 groups, based on a selection based on criteria of exposure to potentially harmful elements, either within the same work of the father or his profession generically considered. The jobs performed in the three months prior to conception and in the first month of pregnancy were taken into account, a period that is considered critical for the sperm of the father to be contaminated by harmful elements.
Most parents performed only one job during that period. Likewise, special mathematical methods were used to overcome the statistical difficulties associated with handling such a large number of categories.
Read more: The Confidential
