Theo Colborn, co-author of the book Our Stolen Future: How We Are
Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, And Survival, was a guest on
Radio Canada's GABEREAU show on Feb. 5...is this the interview you heard?
Ms. Colborn is touting her new book. I haven't heard her speak, so I
would be interested to know if she said during the interview--or wrote in
her book--anything advising women should not breastfeed.

In a discussion of dioxins here on Lactnet last month it was noted that
(to this point) public health environmentalists regard breastfeeding as
the preferred infant feeding choice. That said, research continues to
show environmental hazards are posing large risks to all of us. I recall
reading (might have been from a paper by Ms. Colborn?) that PCBs in some
areas have been found in breastmilk in levels 5 times the safe limits set
by World Health Organization. This statistic is relevant to women who
live in highly contaminated areas (where the ground and water are
polluted the cattle eat the grass and pass contamination through meat
milk; eating fish from polluted waters is another source).

UTNE Reader magazine named Ms. Colborn as one of their 1995 Visionaries
(people who will impact our lives) and had this to say:

>Theo Colborn is the Rachel Carson of the '90's. She will have more
>impact on the chemical industry than any other person in the 20th
>century. A zoologist, Senior Scientist and Director of the Wildlife and
>Contaminants Project at the World Wildlife Fund, she has led alarming
>research into the effects of man-made chemicals in the environment that
>disrupt the endocrine systems of animals and humans. In her research she
>found that animals in the Great Lakes exposed to dioxins and PCBs were
>found to have decreased fertility, birth defects and impaired
>metabolism, raising concerns about the long-term effects of these
>chemicals on human reproductive systems. She is the author of numerous
>articles on the environment, a frequent speaker and a member of the
>Science Advisory Board for NPR's Living on Earth, an environmental news
>program.

Our Stolen Future: How We Are Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence,
And Survival will be published in March by Dutton, and distributed in
Canada by McClelland & Stewart. Theo Colborn can be contacted at: World
Wildlife Fund; 1250 24th St. NW; Washington, DC; 20037

Anyone who finds more info please post. If breastfeeding is being
discouraged by this person we should act quickly.

Margery Wilson, IBCLC
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts
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