I don't make any money these days off of pumps (haven't rented or sold
anything for years), and I still think it is unsanitary to share
vacuum generating devices whose motors can be contaminated with aspirated
body fluids.  This could include blood as well as milk since there are
plenty of people who lose small amounts of blood from cracked nipples or
ductal papillomas.

When milk hits the bottom of a bottle, a splash-back effect is created.
Viral particles, which are very small, can be splashed up into a mist aresol
and sucked back up into a pump's motor.  This has been documented in
clinical research.  You can sterilize the bottle, the flange, but it is
virtually impossible to open up the casing and get inside to sterilize a
motor.  It is the potential for this aspirated viral material to be blown
back down to re-seed freshly pumped milk that is concerning.  This would not
be so dangerous to a mother's own offsprings, as they'd already have been
exposed to the viruses she carries, and would also be receiving specific
antibody thru her milk.  It is, however, more than a theoretical risk if the
pump has had multiple users.

If you disembowel any of the small, hand-held, battery or plug in pumps, you
will find crusted milk in the interior.  I know for a fact that the Mag-Mag
customer service line used to advise women periodically to open their motor
casings with a small, sewing machine-size screw driver to rinse out the
"milk debris".  I had a conversation with their cust. serv. dept. about this
when a woman brought me a Mag-mag she'd bought at a garage sale and was
unhappy with due to poor suction.  When we looked at the crud inside this
pump and realized that it was being blown down (as per the mechanisms
described in the Blenkhorn study) she threw it in the trash with no more
prompting from me.

I refused to deal any other pumps (when I did rent them) except for the
Lactina because all the vacuum creation was external to the motor and hence
was contained in the kit.  I felt I had no legal or moral culpability so
long as I knew that the kit was either new or that I'd autoclaved it myself.
I think that Hollister has a good system now with their filters.

I think it is appalling that hospitals don't have some sort of protocol that
includes a routine infection control inspection of pumps.  I never rented
out a pump I hadn't thoroughly sprayed with Cavicide.  Many times they came
back crusty with milk.  Pumps are often used by women with infections who
can't tolerate direct breastfeeding.  This raises the possibility of
contamination with a number of bacteriologic and fungal agents as well as
blood products.


Barbara Wilson-Clay BSEd, IBCLC
Austin Lactation Associates
http://www.lactnews.com

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