Do OBGYNS advise patients about environmental health?

UC Science Today

Environmental pollutants can damage our health, but how much do we know about their harmful effects? As part of a prenatal patients’ study, Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco has surveyed OBGYNs. The goal was to find out if doctors inform their patients about environmental health as part of their prenatal care. “We actually surveyed doctors, obstetricians to ask them do you talk to your patients about environmental health, what do they say to you, do you think it is an important issue to ask them. And doctors by and large, at least obstetricians said we think this issue is really Important, but we don’t talk to our patients because we don’t have the kind of information we need to give to them.” Woodruff and her team are now filling in the gap integrating environmental health into clinical care. “One thing we have been doing is working with their professional societies to provide this foundational information so it is easier for a physician to give a patient information about environmental exposure they are concerned about.”