A recent study at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has found that men who work in sawmills in the months leading up to child conception may be at risk of having a child born with birth defects.
According to HardwoodFloorsMag.com, researchers analyzed the job histories of 10,000 U.S. dads who had a child with one or more birth defects born between 1997 and 2004, as well as the job histories of 4,000 dads whose kids did not have birth defects.
The study, published in the Occupational & Environmental Medicine journal, identified a slew of jobs that are linked to birth defects including: physicists, computer scientists; artists; photographers and photo processors; food service workers; landscapers and groundskeepers; hairdressers; office and administration support workers; those working with oil and gas; those working in chemical industries; printers; those operating cranes and diggers; and drivers.
Researchers indicated that these occupations and many like them in which workers are commonly exposed to solvents were associated with an increased risk of eye, heart and intestinal defects, and oral clefts.