Patrick J. Parsons
Postdoctoral training: National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD
PhD University of London, England
Dr. Parsons is Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. His primary appointment is with the New York State Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center (since 1986), where he currently serves as Director, Division of Environmental Health Sciences (since 2017) and Chief, Laboratory of Inorganic and Nuclear Chemistry Laboratory (since 2009). Dr. Parsons is also the Clinical Laboratory Director for the Wadsworth Center’s Biggs Laboratory campus at the Empire state Plaza, where he oversees environmental testing of clinical samples.
Dr. Parsons’s research is focused on how trace elements affect human health. His laboratory develops new technologies and tools to measure internal exposures (biomonitoring) and external exposures (environmental monitoring). The goal of this research is to provide better insights into what is now called the “exposome”. According to the CDC, the exposome can be defined as “the measure of all the exposures of an individual in a lifetime and how those exposures relate to health.” Each person has a unique exposome, which begins before birth, and continues throughout life with exposures from the environment, diet, lifestyle, etc., interacting with our own unique genetics and physiology. Understanding how trace elements may impact the exposome is important – from the nutritional role of the essential elements, e.g., Cu, Se and Zn, to assessing exposure to non-essential toxic elements such as Pb, Cd, Hg and As. To support such studies, Dr. Parsons’ laboratory has developed specialized techniques for measuring trace elements at extremely low levels in human tissues and body fluids (Biomonitoring), as well as in food and environmental matrices, using state-of-the-art analytical techniques based on atomic spectrometry. Trace element analysis at the µg/L to ng/L range is carried out using Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) and Graphite Furnace Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (GFAAS). Class 100 Clean Rooms are required to ensure contamination is minimized. The laboratory is well equipped with more than 10 ICP-MS instruments including: 2 Perkin Elmer NexION instruments equipped with dynamic reaction cell (DRC) technology; a Thermo Series X2 quadrupole ICP-MS instrument, equipped with collision cell (CC) technology; 5 Agilent tandem ICP-MS/MS instruments (i.e., triple quads) of which three are interfaced to Liquid Chromatography (LC) for speciation analysis, and 2 Thermo TQ ICP-MS/MS instruments. Additionally, the laboratory has a Thermo Element 2 Sector Field ICP-MS that is used to measure isotope ratios and elements with polyatomic interferences that are not easily resolved by a single quadrupole mass analyzer. Current research in the Parsons’ laboratory is supported by NIH and CDC grants.
Previous projects funded by NIEHS supported development of well-characterized bone reference materials certified for lead content that are used to validate techniques based on GFAAS and ICP-MS, as well as K-shell X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry. The latter is used for non-invasive, in vivo bone lead measurements.
Although the total elemental content is useful, speciation methods can provide a much more detailed picture of how some trace elements behave. The lab has pioneered development of mercury speciation methods in whole blood using LC coupled to ICP-MS/MS. In a similar manner, the lab has developed methods for analyzing human urine (and food products) for up to five arsenic species by LC-ICP-MS/MS. Working with the US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), the laboratory produced SRM 955c Toxic Metals in Caprine Blood, and helped certify SRM 955d. The Parsons’ laboratory has an on-going interest using new instrumentation based on monochromatic XRF. One such project involved assessing environmental exposure to Pb, As, and Hg among ethnic Chinese living in upstate NY, that was supported by NIEHS grant funding.
Dr. Parsons is also interested in studying the physiologic distribution of trace elements in bone, teeth and brain samples using Laser Ablation coupled to ICP-MS, with a focus on developing calibration materials for quantification. Other research projects involve collaborations with investigators at the SUNY Oswego, Weill Cornell Medicine, Albany Medical Center, Boston University, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, and SUNY Buffalo. The Parsons’ lab has a long-standing collaboration and student exchange program with the trace elements group at the Universidade de São Paulo – Ribeirão Preto, Brasil. In addition to externally funded research studies, the laboratory also operates a biomonitoring proficiency testing program for trace elements. Well-characterized blood, serum and urine reference materials are developed and certified for trace element content.
Courses
- EHS 520: Principles of Environmental Chemistry
- EHS 525: Environmental Chemical Analysis