Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

hello,

I am conducting my science fair experiment on how possibly carcinogenic chemicals found in household cleaning supplies affect the growth of adenocarcinoma cells of the lung compared to nicotine.

I am thinking about testing formaldehyde as one of my chemicals because I understand it is found in some laundry detergents and I had a few questions...

1. How can people limit formaldehyde exposure in their homes?

2. What are some short term health affects of formaldehyde?

Thank You!

Hello and welcome to Science Buddies!

You have chosen a very interesting and relevant topic for your research. To get answers to your initial questions, you'll have to do some background research. A great place to start is the National Cancer Institute, which provides further suggestions for places to look for answers, such as the Environmental Protection Agency.

Start here: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/fact ... rmaldehyde

I hope that helps you get started. Please post again (in this same thread) if you have more questions along the way.

Best,
Heather

Thank you so much Heather! That website was very helpful.

I spoke to my teacher and he thought it would be beneficial if I change my science fair project to something more innovative. He believes I should be answering a question, not just comparing results I accumulate.

I am all out of ideas.

Any suggestions?

It sounds to me like what you need is a hypothesis. A hypothesis is basically your educated guess (based on previous research and a literature search) about what will happen in your experiment. It will guide your project and experiments. In the project you were considering before, you might hypothesize that exposure to formaldehyde will lead to increased growth of adenocarcinoma cells, for example. In the end, it doesn't matter whether you or right or wrong as long as you can get an answer. A clear hypothesis and planned experiments might convince your teacher that you do have a testable question.

If you would like to look for a different project, though, I recommend you look through our Science Fair Project Ideas (https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... deas.shtml). There are lots of good ideas there, and if you have a particular interest in cancer or something, you can search for that topic.

Hope this helps and feel free to post again in this forum if you need more help.

JMP

Thank you so much!
Very helpful information!