Previewing a Talk on Mercury Speciation in Whole Blood

At the upcoming Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, which will be taking place from January 9–17^th in Tucson, Arizona, Patrick Parsons, Director in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences at the Wadsworth Center at the New York State Department of Health and a Professor at the University at Albany, SUNY, will deliver a talk titled “Mercury Speciation in Whole Blood: Why Liquid Chromatography with Vapor Generation Coupled to ICP-MS is Preferable to GC-ID-ICP-MS for Biomonitoring Studies” (1). Parson’s talk will take place on Friday, January 16^th at 1:30 pm local time.

Parsons earned his PhD at the University of London, England, before conducting his postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland (2). Over the course of his career, Parsons has spent more than four decades studying how trace elements influence human health, with a focus on understanding the human exposome, which is the totality of environmental, dietary, and lifestyle exposures across a lifetime and their interaction with genetics and physiology (2). His research spans the nutritional roles of essential trace elements such as copper, selenium, and zinc, as well as exposure to toxic metals and metalloids including lead, cadmium, mercury, and arsenic (2). To support this work, his laboratory develops advanced analytical methodologies using state-of-the-art atomic spectrometry to measure trace elements at ultra-low levels in biological, food, and environmental samples (2).

In the first part of our interview with Parsons, he offers a preview of what he will be speaking about at the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, and he also provides his thoughts about what he is looking forward to at the conference in Tucson.

This video clip is the first part of our conversation with Parsons. To stay up to date on our coverage of the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, click here.

References

1. IASA, Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry. IASA. Available at: https://iasa.world/winter-plasma-conference (accessed 2026-01-06).
2. Wadsworth Center, Patrick J. Parsons, PhD. NY State Department of Health. Available at: https://www.wadsworth.org/senior-staff/patrick-parsons (accessed 2025-01-07).