"Formula has many other hazards, but environmental contamination is not
one of them."

Does anyone remember the Thanksgiving 20 years ago that few Americans
had turkey because it was revealed that the industrial feed had been
heavily contaminated with pesticide due to a spill?  The turkeys had
made it all the way to market before someone revealed the problem.

And what about the cows who grazed next to highways and freeways before
unleaded fuel became the standard? What was the level of lead in their
milk?

What do we think dairy cows eat and drink now?  Do we believe their food
supply is somehow more protected than ours is?  When their feed becomes
contaminated, is the milk always destroyed? 

And then there was the dairyman back east who was inadvertently adding
dangerously high levels of vitamin D to his milk--is he really the only
person in the U.S. we believe could make that mistake?

Dairying and formula-making/packaging are mega-industries, and it would
be naïve to believe that we have more control over each step of those
processes than we do over that to which we ourselves are exposed.  Big
industry is big money, and whistleblowers are slow to correct problem
situations.  For instance, we have a baby dying in April 2001 due to
Enterobacter sakazakii contamination of formula, and a subsequent recall
18 months later in November 2002.*

So, even if a consumer trusts the current published reports that show a
lower level of environmental contamination in formula as compared to
breastmilk, those levels are subject to change at any time, and the
notification, if it comes at all, will occur at some point after the
levels rise.  Consumers should be uncomfortable with the likelihood of
increasing exposure in our increasingly polluted world.  Discomfort is
an appropriate response.

Until they can raise cows and mothers on the moon, there is no source of
food for infants which is not subject to contamination by environmental
pollution on Earth.  Nor is there a mother's womb which can escape
environmental exposure--and industry has not yet provided an alternative
there.  

It would be a disservice to allow consumers to believe in an illusion of
protection against environmental or any other type of contamination in
formula.  Better that they use their discomfort to enable them to take
action in the matter of pollution, no matter how they choose to feed
their infants.


Arly Helm, MS, IBCLC


*Infant formula recalled, 1.5 million cans:  FDA testing shows E.
sakazakii contamination  (Saturday, November 2, 2002) 
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
has announced the recall of 1.5 million cans of powdered infant formula
that may contain a pathogen that could be very dangerous to premature or
newborn infants. http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/11/02/formula.recall/

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