Dear Debi,

>        One interesting fact is that the longer a mother nurses, the lower the
> concentration of environmental contaminants in her breast tissue.  The
> chilling reality is that the mother's levels decrease because she has passed
> on much of the contaminent to her nursing children.

While indeed the toxins levels in mothers do lower after each child, this is not
only due to lactation. In fact lots of the toxins are passed during pregnancy.  So
whether you nurse or not, the mother do pass toxins to the baby, and her own toxin
stores decrease.

The studies show that the toxins passed during pregnancy do have negative effects
on the development and health of the baby. Breastfeeding -despite raising the
actual toxin levels in the baby- seems to countereffect of the prenatal exposure
of toxins to the baby.
A high prenatal exposure also had a 'positive' effect on the health: less allergy,
probably due to the fact the children had more infections.

Environmental exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins.
Consequences for longterm neurological and cognitive development of the child
lactation. Boersma ER, Lanting CI . Adv Exp Med Biol 2000;478:271-87.
"Despite a higher PCB exposures from breast milk we found at 18 months, 42 months
of age, and at 6 years of age a beneficial effect of breast feeding on the quality
of movements, in terms of fluency, and on the cognitive development tests."
"Human breast milk volume and fat content is adversely affected by the presently
encountered PCB levels in W. Europe. Our studies showed evidence that breast
feeding counteracts the adverse developmental effects of PCBs and dioxins."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=110
65080&dopt=Abstract

Yesterday I advocated bf counsellors and their organizations have more knowledge
on this issue. If you have it will be easier to respond directly to emergency
situations. This issue usually comes up as alarming news, causing lots of fear by
people. A quick respinse can do a lot good.

Eg, since we Dutch and Belgium bf cousellors do know a bit about this, when the
dioxin crisis in Belgium came up in 1999, the Belgium bf organizations could
respond very quickly. They made their statement very quick, and their advise was
taken over by the national crisisteams.

This has prevented lots of fear under mothers. Quiting breastfeeding was hardly
recommended. Everyone knew it wasn't necessary.

The Belgium government has put the official Dutch report on this on its site:

http://www.health.fgov.be/AGP/nl/artikels_notas/mededelingen_volksgezondheid/dioxi
nen/dioxine-gezraad.htm#Executive%20summary

(http://www.health.fgov.be/AGP/nl/artikels_notas/mededelingen_volksgezondheid/diox
inen/dioxine-gezraad.htm )


"Their exposure through the maternal milk, expressed per kilogramme of body
weight, may thus be substantially higher than that of adults.  These exposure
figures may be compared to the recommended exposure limit proposed by the
Committee. This leads to the conclusion that the possibility that the ingestion of
dioxin-like compounds causes adverse health effects in the Dutch population cannot
be excluded with reasonable certainty. The Committee believes that it is supported
in this conclusion by the correspondences between the degree of prenatal and
postnatal exposure to dioxin-like substances and differences in development found
in studies of infants up to the age of 18 months. However, the findings of these
Dutch studies gave no indication of development in infants outside what is
considered to be the normal range. According to the committee the best way to
reduce the exposure of infants is to reduce the life-time exposure of mothers, in
fact the exposure of the whole population. Limitation of breastfeeding is not the
right way. It was already known and recent studies confirmed that breast feeding
has a positive effect on the development of infants compared to formulafeeding.
There is no reason to limit the freedom of parents to choose between breastfeeding
and formulafeeding for their infant."



regards, Annelies Bon
Lay counsellor of the Dutch bf organization "Borstvoeding Natuurlijk"
Toxins in human milk: http://www.borstvoeding.com/abon/bf_toxins.html

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