Keep Breast Milk Safe

Without doubt, breast milk is the best food for infants. It has the correct nutrients in the correct proportions, and in manifold ways contributes to immunity, growth, development, and a healthy bond between mother and child. But breast milk can also include some hazards—it extends to the child the mother's exposure to any number of environmental pollutants. Moreover, breast milk can indicate past dangers—its contamination implies contaminated womb conditions during the prenatal period, the most crucial time in a child's development. What contaminants? Fat-soluble ones that accumulate up the food chain and often persist for years, including persistent organic pollutants (POPs) like DDT, PCBs, and dioxin, heavy metals like lead and mercury, and solvents. Does this mean you should switch to cow's milk or formula? No—pesticides and hormones in cow's milk cause their own problems, as does contamination in the water in formula, and neither has the all the immune-system pluses of mother's milk. Breast milk is almost always better, and safe breast milk is best.

The United States needs a standardized, national breast milk monitoring program in place: to assess the efficacy of bans on certain POPs; to discover new contaminants before they are widespread; to discover which demographic groups are most at risk; and to discover which contaminants cut across lines of race, class, and geography. Only with deep and diverse data can public health experts truly begin to address the issue. Please write to your senators and representatives to urge them to support funding for a national breast-milk monitoring program. Call the Capital switchboard, 202/244-3121, to be connected to your congressperson , or check the web sites, www.senate.gov and www.house.gov to get all their contact information. You may also send the letter below, personalizing it and altering it as you see fit.

Dear _____

I'm a concerned parent and voter. As you may know, dangerous pesticides, industrial chemicals, solvents, and heavy metals accumulate in the food chain and then in mother's milk, placing infants at risk. While we've banned some of these hazardous substances, the larger problem remains—unlike other countries such as Germany and Sweden, the United States has no national breast-milk monitoring program. We have no idea of what chemicals our children are being exposed to. Our doctors and scientists are, for lack of good information, prevented from acting effectively on a major public health issue.

Please support hearings on, and funding for, national breast-milk monitoring. Parents, and new mothers especially, should not have to worry about hurting their babies' health. They should be able to know what they are feeding their children, and be able to know it is safe.

Sincerely,

________

There is a wealth of specific information available. Environmental Health Perspectives devoted a special "mini-monograph" to aspects of "Chemical Contaminants in Breast Milk," with articles including a more detailed synopsis of the problem, and scientific and global perspectives. The National Resources Defense Council is spearheading activism on the issue; they have a report, "Healthy Milk, Healthy Baby: Chemical Pollution and Mother's Milk," available at www.nrdc.org/breastmilk.

Another initiative worth your time and advocacy is the National Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act (S. 983/H.R. 1746), which has been stuck in both Senate and House committees since at least May. The act would provide the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences $30 million per year for research grants to study potential links between the environment and breast cancer; grants would be peer-reviewed and both multidisciplinary and multi-institutional. The National Breast Cancer Coalition, the bill's sponsor, has more information.