ALS And Formaldehyde: Male Funeral Directors May Be At An Increased Risk From Exposure

Could funeral directors be more likely to get ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's disease, a progressive disorder that slowly kills the nervous system?

A new study suggests that over time, formaldehyde exposure may play a role, particularly for funeral directors who tend to be exposed to the highest levels of the chemical.

"These are people who are involved in embalming," said study researcher Andrea Roberts, a research associate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, via Live Science. 

For the study, researchers examined data from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study, a federal database that includes employment information on over 1 million U.S. adults. At 25 and older, participants in the survey were asked about their current or most recent job.

Researchers estimated any on-the-job exposure to formaldehyde with criteria from the U.S. National Cancer Institute, and then death records to track deaths caused by ALS.

Findings revealed that men who were exposed to formaldehyde often were three times as likely to die of ALS as those who had never been exposed to the chemical. Furthermore, this risk increased even more for those exposed to large quantities of formaldehyde.

"We found that, in those jobs in which their likelihood for exposure to formaldehyde was high and the amount of formaldehyde they were exposed to was also high, those people were at four times greater risk of dying of ALS than people with no job related to formaldehyde exposure," Roberts said.

Though the same link was not seen in women, researchers noted that the study does not show a cause-and-effect link between formaldehyde exposure and ALS risk.

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.

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