TOXICITY…. and what it means to you.

By Ernest D. Lykissa Ph.D

I would like to help illuminate somehow the complex conditions that exist today, as far as working on job sites that can be potentially hazardous to both the worker and the employer. Of course we should always keep in mind that the difficulty in making any kind of headway in these matters stem from the lack of meaningful regulatory measures, and the frightening level of ignorance that exists among the people that are somehow supposed to know. The number of new chemical agents requiring new complex manufacturing procedures is increasing logarithmically as I am writing this page. Yet, we are years away from beginning to understand and been able to manage the potential toxic damage that we are bringing on to ourselves and others around us. We all enjoy, some more than others the good life that is the result of investing hard work and hard earned money. But we should remember that a life of luxury includes a lot of products that require vast amounts of energy to be produced, and continue to require consumption of energy throughout their useful life. When we are done using one of those products we are faced with the headache of what to do with it. Throw it out, or recycle it. And here we arrive at the meat of this page: 1. someone has to do it. and 2. Someone has to pay to have it done. That is Economics 101, plain and simple, what is not so easy to manage is the aftereffects of such an enterprise.

Through my experience as a forensic toxicologist I have been asked on numerous occasions to evaluate workers that were suffering from a multitude of symptoms, due to toxic exposures on the job site. Whenever the employer and the employee have been planning and thinking ahead, most types of industrial work exposures, are easily managed with no or very little damage for all parties concerned. In the other hand whenever there has been lack of preparedness due to financial constraints, indifference, or plain overwhelming job duties, the circumstances have been frequently catastrophic. I did go through the process of educating medical students while my stay at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston with the facts of Medical Toxicology. Well now I find it my duty to attempt to educate the Industry of Houston in attempting to manage potential toxicity in the water, air and land we live on. The only thing that has worked so far is testing before hand  the worker, sometimes the job site and or the process to be used, in order to evaluate potential pitfalls. And then test again throughout the process in order to establish the level of management that exists in relationship to the work performed. The technology we utilize at ExperTox Inc in Deer Park is state of the art. We use Gas Chromatography/ Mass Spectrometry, Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry, Ion Liquid Chromatography/ Mass Spectrometry  and a lot of common sense to name a few. It is only with this level of technical testing that we can obtain meaningful and most frequently than none, court defensible data  for drugs of abuse on the job site, metal residues such as nickel, mercury, lead, chromium, cadmium, arsenic etc. benzene, toluene and other volatile agents. Before I close, remember when in doubt call me, or if not me call someone that can help you manage your situation before you fall so far behind that there is no catch-up.