40 years ago, many of the chemical toxins that are now found in mother's milk didn't even exist.
Since then, the varieties and levels of toxins in women's breast milk have increased dramatically. This trend is increasing health risks for all nursing infants.
First things, first. It's not time to panic, and not time to stop nursing. In almost all cases, the health benefits of nursing far outweigh the potential problems from POPs. But it is time to learn more about the problem, and ultimately to take social and political action to protect our children's children from facing a more difficult choice when it's their time to care for a newborn.
The simple and natural truth is that women and their children have a fundamental right to clean breast milk. The presence of chemical industry wastes in "nature's first food" is a trespass on the most private parts of our lives. Considering all factors, breastfeeding is still recommended, but concerns that chemical pollutants detract from the many benefits of breastfeeding are real. That women are faced with doubts about their breast milk is an outrage that must be corrected by stopping the exposures at their source, not by stopping breastfeeding.
Exposure to the Fetus and Infant
Although chemical pollutants affect all of us, the very young are the most vulnerable.
Pound for pound, children eat more, drink more and breathe more than adults. Among the chemicals that can invade breast milk: [...] chlordane; DDT; dieldrin, aldrin and endrin; hexachlorobenzene; hexachlorocyclohexane (lindane) heptachlor; mirex; toxaphene; dioxins and furans; PBDEs; and PCBs. Several substances that are not persistent organochlorines but that nevertheless threaten the purity of breast milk are [...] nitro musks and musk xylenes; lead, mercury, cadmium and other metals; and solvents.
Infants' brains and other organs are also undergoing rapid development, and it is critically important that their developing bodies receive the correct signals. Exposure to hazardous substances during critical periods of infant development can disrupt these signals of normal development and lead to health problems later in life. Link.
The problem is documented but only rarely discussed. It should be common knowledge, and a concern to every thinking person on this planet. The transfer process - toxins from mothers to infants - was described touchingly in Sandra Steingraber's important book
Living Downstream;
"Their sharp decline in concentration [in the mother] over the course of breast-feeding, therefore, represents the movement of the accumulated toxins from mother to child.
It signifies that during the intimate act of nursing, a burden of public poisons - insect killers, electrical insulating fluids, industrial solvents, and incinerator residues - is shifted from one generation to the tiny bodies of the next."
What should we all be doing with this information?
Perhaps it is too overwhelming, too big to change. Clearly this is not a trend that would be easy to reverse.
But remember that our babies already start off on the wrong foot chemically, even before they are born;
"American babies are born pre-polluted, their bodies laced with as many as 300 industrial compounds, pollutants, plastics, pesticides and other substances that threaten public health." - April 16, 2010, - Richard Wiles, Environmental Working Group
These numbers have risen dramatically in recent decades, and will continue to do so if we allow. Remember too, just as clearly, literally all credible voices on the subject still say that breast feeding is the healthiest smartest choice that mothers can make.
But as we continue to saturate our environment with more and more poisons, that choice may become the wrong one in the future.
Women on Fire
We need regulatory changes that slow the dispersion of known toxins and guarantee more caution about future chemical risks. That means we need women on fire, battling for new politicians that aren't afraid to regulate business effectively.
40 years ago, many of the chemical toxins that are now found in mother's milk did not even exist.
40 years from now, or only 10 years, or 20, how saturated, with what toxins, will mother's milk have to be? It is critical it is that we reform government, with a far more precautionary approach to toxic exposures and other environmental issues. That is the only way on earth to realistically have a hope for a healthy future, "from one generation to the tiny bodies of the next."
To be clear, we are saturating in these toxins to a critical degree because of decisions made by our politicians. Anyone who wishes to help alter this trend would have to become political about it, speak out and teach others, and have an impact about who gets elected and what their real allegiances are.
The link above is helpful as is the one embedded here: The point is not to discourage women from breastfeeding, but to ask them to make sure they elect governments that will not align themselves with industrial interests, and will work to slow and then reverse this trend of saturation. In all but the most extreme circumstances, then, breast milk remains the best food for babies. [3] Yet we cannot ignore the increasing burdens of persistent contaminants in the bodies of mothers and children.
It is going to take concentrated effort to prevent a world in which, in two or three decades, breast milk might simply be too dangerous.