Monday, August 10, 2015

Stuart Millheiser: What Funeral Directors Should Know About ALS

By Jason McDonald


Certain jobs entail higher levels of risk than others. Those who perform manual labor, on a daily basis, are more likely to experience discomfort or injuries than those who take up office jobs with little physical activity to account for. Anyone who has been involved in medical practice or awareness, like Stuart Millheiser, can attest to this. With that said, I think that it would be wise to go over the work of funeral directors, and the connection that it may have to ALS.

TIME published an article that detailed how funeral directors may be at greater risk of developing ALS than previously considered. The main reason for this was formaldehyde, which is a chemical compound that the workers in question are exposed to on a regular basis. Keep in mind that formaldehyde has a number of uses, including the smoke that goes with cigarettes. Of course, there is more information that can be detailed by the likes of Stuart Millheiser.

Research that was published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry detailed the deaths associated with ALS and exposure to formaldehyde. There was a study that sampled a total of 1.5 million Americans, each with different jobs. Suffice it to say, exposure to the aforementioned compound would vary on a person-by-person basis. To say that the results stunned me would be an understatement, as I am sure was the case for other readers as well.

Funeral directors - mostly men who were exposed to high amounts of formaldehyde, were approximately 4.5 times more likely to die from ALS, than those who worked jobs with little to no exposure. Andrea Roberts, who was one of the authors involved in the study mentioned earlier, stated that females usually had different job descriptions compared to men in the field. More often than not, Roberts said, female employees tended to work more with clients, as opposed to becoming involved in embalming, which is where formaldehyde exposure was most prominent. This is more worthwhile information to be highlighted by the likes of Stuart Millheiser.

It's easy to see that information like this can draw intrigue. After all, ALS has entailed tremendous amount of research, and it is still going to this day. People want to know what makes this condition tick, from the people it impacts to the potential causes which bring it to the surface to begin with. Suffice it to say, details like these are nothing short of informative. The more research that is done, in the long term, the more that we will ultimately learn about ALS.




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