Video: Environmental Things to Avoid While Pregnant

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Environmental things to avoid while pregnant include any solvents, high-fume paints or pesticides, but keeping the room well-ventilated makes painting a room and painting nails safer. Use caution when using high-fume products with helpful information from a certified nurse-midwife in this free video on pregnancy.

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Video Transcript

Well you can just make yourself crazy. You worry about the foods you eat, the air you breathe, the water you drink and how safe everything is. This is Mavis Schorn, certified nurse midwife and professor at Vanderbilt School of Nursing and I'm here to talk to you a little bit about some of the toxins that you may be around while you are pregnant and some precautions you might take. So things like one category that you may be around and that is what's called solvents. Those are things that are used in like when you get your nails done or dry cleaning or painting, you decide you want to paint the baby's room or maybe you are a manicurist and you're wondering is this OK? The best thing that I can tell you is to make the ventilation as good as you can, if you're painting the baby's room, open the window, stay with more of the latex paints if somebody's going to do the oil painting, see if you can talk somebody else into doing that part, but having a fan going, have the windows open really open up the ventilation. As far as getting your nails done, that's OK. If you're doing it all of the time, use the precautions that you have there, hopefully that you have good ventilation in your work environment. Another category that is of concern are pesticides. And that may be just getting your house done, sprayed for bugs or it may be that you garden a lot or you use pesticides in that way. If it's getting your house done, I would definitely talk to the people who do that work for you and so that you understand that there is some risk. If you can be out of the house while they're spraying and they may have guideline to you as to how long that you should be out. It might even be staying out overnight. It really depends on the chemicals that they're using. If you're a chemist or you work in a high risk area like with chemicals, being a chemist or biologist or you're a scientist or you are in that any kind of a health care worker where you may be exposed to some toxins or that sort of thing, follow OSHA guidelines and you know what I mean by OSHA guidelines if you work in those areas. They are designed to help you as a worker to be safe. Those guidelines that are for every worker is are protects you as a pregnant woman as well so you can feel confidant in following those guidelines. If you have any other specific because there's so many different kinds of toxins you may be exposed to, if there's something particular that is of concern to you I would definitely take it to your midwife or physician and talk to them in a little bit more detail.

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Environmental Things to Avoid While Pregnant

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