"Why can't we talk about both?"--environmental risks during pregnancy &
breastfeeding.

Jennifer asks an important question regarding Valerie's post.

 

Out of 15,000 allowed chemicals in the US, just one chemical of a group,
PDBE in breastmilk, is 10-100 times higher than Europe or Japan.  Swedish
levels have been dropping since they rightly phased it out over 10 years
ago.  It follows that US blood levels have also been higher and rising
throughout pregnancy, while Swedes blood levels are dropping.  PDBE's were
not detected in stored blood from the 1970s.
http://apha.confex.com/apha/132am/techprogram/session_14062.htm

 

Pregnant women do not know where or when toxic exposures happen.  As Sandra
Steingraber says, all reproductive age women are their childrens first
habitat.  Besides the dose of the toxin, the timing of exposure is critical.
Then add in possible synergistic effects with other chemicals.  The first
prenatal visit is too late to clean up habitat.  Here in the Pacific NW we
environmentally clean up streams before releasing salmon hatchlings, not
after.  

 

Some toxins have been deliberately added to our environment for our own
good. Fluoridated water has since 1952.  Human breastmilk contains
5-16mcg/Liter, even if the mother eats and drinks the typical US diet, which
bio-accumulates fluoride beyond the 1ppm of water to 2-3ppm daily when you
add in processed foods made with water or pesticide residues.
http://www.keepersofthewell.org/diligence_pdfs/amount_in_foods.pdf

Breastmilk has 1/100th the fluoride of powdered infant formula made with
city fluoridated tap water.  The first and only dental toxicology and
neurotoxicity study, 15 years of work, was published in 1995 showed fluoride
crosses both the placenta and the blood/brain barrier.  But it is still in
our public water and is even now being mandated in many more states.  Sweden
rejected it on the basis of research of their Nobel Prize winning scientist,
Arvid Carlsson.  The US does not operate with the due diligence of Sweden
when it comes to chemicals, does it?  

 

Even when concerns are raised here, chemicals like PDBE are gradually phased
out and supplies depleted rather than abruptly halted, all due to profit
motives of the manufacturers.  

Remember MTBE in fuel contaminating California groundwater?
http://www.energy.ca.gov/mtbe/

 

Judy Ritchie 

 

 

  

 

 


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