The government is full of acronyms! Technically speaking, I am not a government employee. But since I am a contractor working at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) I'm going to need to learn quite a few. NHANES (pronounced n-hanes) is the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and it is an on-going project that I'll be working with.
Here's the Wikipedia for NHANES
The branch of the CDC that I am a part of is called IRAT (Inoragnic and Radiation Analytical Toxicology) which is under the division DLS (Division of Laboratory Sciences) which all falls under NCEH (National Center for Environmental Health).
Our work in IRAT for NHANES is to complete the inorganic (i.e. non biological stuff) laboratory testing of human samples (blood, urine and serum) collected from volunteers. The inorganics we are looking for are elements, such as arsenic, lead, cadmium, etc. We want to analytically determine the levels of these elements in the human samples because they are toxicologically important. The data is then reported back to the NCHS (National Center for Health Statistics).
Are you still awake?
p.s. I had a GREAT first week of work! I'm so thankful that my mom was here to play with and take care of my kids so I could focus on getting up each day and getting my butt out of the house.
1 comment:
hi deanna, mike & co. - 3:45 a.m. - deanna you really have been busy! i thought i was the only one up at that time of night (morning??).
miss you here but everything sounds like it is coming together. your job sounds hard but interesting (at least for someone 'science challenged' like me :-).
AND your kitchen is gorgeous. probably won't be long until it is filled with joyful deadheads and laughing children.
have a great week, guys. with lots of love, - bool
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