Do chemicals affect the pregnant woman and her fetus if her work is related to these substances
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Studies conducted by various specialists - obstetrician-gynecologists, teratologists, embryopharmacologists, physiologists and many others, suggest that chemicals can actually affect the fetus, causing the development of embryopathies. Embryopathy is a congenital anomaly that occurs in the first three months of pregnancy. (In addition to embryopathies, fetopathies are also distinguished, these are anomalies that have arisen in the fetus after the third month of pregnancy). Causes of embryopathy can be:
- viral infections (rubella, cytomegalia, herpes, etc.);
- exposure to chemicals;
- exposure to drugs;
- exposure to radiant energy;
- hormonal disorders in the mother (diabetes, thyrotoxicosis, myxedema);
- effects of alcohol and drugs.
Four critical periods of fetal development are divided: preimplantation, implantation, organogenesis and placenta, fetal period.
Thus, there are several critical periods during which external pathological effects on the fetus can lead to its death. The first critical period is the 7th-8th day after fertilization. Of course, this period you may not feel. If at that time the external effect killed the fetus, then you may not have any special health problems. Well, except that the monthly can go a little earlier or a little later and be more abundant than usual.
The second critical period occurs in the third week of intrauterine development and lasts until the sixth week. The laying of various organs during this period does not occur at the same time, so deformities can occur in isolation in different organ systems, especially if the external effect on a woman is unstable.
The fourth stage of embryonic development is called fetal, or fetal, and it lasts until the 40th week of pregnancy. In this period, ugliness almost does not arise. The only exception is the anomalies in the development of genital organs in female fetuses, if their mothers take hormonal drugs that have an androgenic effect (male hormones). This can lead to the appearance of false male hermaphroditism.
To date, the literature describes more than 700 chemical compounds that can adversely affect the developing embryo, because they are able to penetrate the female body through the utero-placental barrier.
Petrol. His couples, having got into the body of a woman, penetrate into the tissues of the uterus, reducing its contractile activity. They can also disrupt the menstrual cycle. But most importantly, they have a direct toxic effect on the fetus.
In women who are chronically poisoned with petrol vapors, spontaneous abortions, premature births and stillbirths often occur. And the children have gross developmental anomalies. Analyzes showed that gasoline penetrates many fetal tissues, and its greatest concentration was noted in brain tissue of newborns.
No less dangerous are the phenols, which, penetrating the woman's body, inhibit the attachment of the fetal egg in the uterus. In laboratory animals phenols caused the birth of non-viable offspring, or cubs with eye anomalies and other deformities, for example, slow ossification of the skeleton.
In the production of synthetic rubber, a large number of different compounds are released into the air. One of them is styrene. It leads to the development of children whose mothers worked in the rubber industry, hypotrophy. They are much more likely than usual to have allergies and colds.
Carbon disulfide, used in the viscose industry, even if its content in the air does not exceed the maximum permissible concentrations, falls into the female body, and from there, through the placenta, into the tissue of the embryo. This substance can cause intrauterine fetal death.
The same pattern is observed in women working in production, where the maximum permissible concentrations of manganese are higher than normal.
Antimony and mercury disrupt the genital function in women, leading to an increase in the number of spontaneous abortions, premature births and the birth of impaired children.
Women working with lead experience infertility, spontaneous abortions, stillbirths. And even if children are born alive, the percentage of deaths is very high among them.
If we summarize all this information, then we can say that under the influence of chemical substances on the women's organism (even if the norms and maximum permissible concentrations of the substance are observed), most of them exhibit a violation of the childbearing function. But the ugliness in children is not very common. Apparently, deformities arise when the maximum allowable concentration of a chemical substance exceeds the norm many times over. In addition, it is of great importance in which of the periods of development of the embryo this effect took place.
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