What to Take to Your Doctor

Every year more than four million American workers are seriously injured or sickened by exposure to chemicals and other toxic substances. Toxic agents ranked fıfth in underlying causes of U.S. deaths in 2000.

These powerful statistics haven’t made a powerful impact on the education of medical doctors in the United States. Graduating medical students consistently report receiving inadequate instruction in environmental and occupational health. The one study that’s been done showed that the average medical student gets 7 hours on the topic in four years of study.

So if you’re sick, you shouldn’t be surprised if your doctor focuses all their attention on how to treat your illness rather than on what caused you to get sick. If you want to discuss the role that chemicals played in your illness, ChemHAT can help.

Gather up the MSDS sheets or photographs of labels or anything else you have with the chemicals you’ve been exposed to with you to the doctor. Then use CHemHAT to identify the health hazard of the chemicals. Once you’re on the page for each chemical, click on the "How do we know" button near the health problem you're facing. The next screen will show the list of authoritative scientific bodies that determined the hazard of each chemical. Print out copies of these two pages to bring to your next appointment.

For more help or more information, contact us.