"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 *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html