The Parsons Laboratory at Wadsworth blends applied research with public health practice, integrating:
- analytical atomic spectrometry and clinical laboratory medicine
- interdisciplinary studies focused on environmental chemistry and human health
We collaborate with clinicians, toxicologists, epidemiologists, and other public health professionals to understand how some of the more interesting chemical elements in the Periodic Table enter the human body. The goal is to assess human exposure, especially to non-essential trace elements that can be highly toxic, even at very low levels in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink.
Our laboratory has developed the skills and expertise necessary to measure toxic elements at trace and ultra-trace levels in human tissues and body fluids (blood, urine, placenta, umbilical cord, follicular fluid, nails, seminal plasma, teeth and bone), as well as environmental and food matrices.
Our external funding provides us with world-class instrumentation based on atomic spectrometry, coupled with class 100 (ISO 5) clean rooms and other facilities, which we use to push the limits of what can be measured reliably and with confidence.
Visit our lab pages to learn more about the things we do, our current funding, publications and the projects we are working on.
Image reproduced with permission of P.J. Parsons and Spectrochimica Acta Part B: Atomic Spectroscopy.