I don’t remember how much milk we’d all drunk before the mistake was discovered. I do remember watching the television news reports of the incident. Over 500 contaminated Michigan farms were quarantined. Approximately 30,000 cattle, 4,500 swine, 1,500 sheep, and 1.5 million chickens were destroyed, along with over 800 tons of animal feed, 18,000 pounds of cheese, 2,500 pounds of butter, 5 million eggs, and 34,000 pounds of dried milk products.

I’ll never forget the feeling I had watching millions of gallons of milk being destroyed. But what I also came to realize was that it was far easier to get rid of that tainted milk than it was to eliminate the fire retardants that had accumulated in my body as a result of drinking it. Fire retardants – also known as PBBs – cause cancer in lab animals and are thought to be endocrine disruptors – chemicals that interfere with hormones.

How many of you are mothers? How many people have or had a mother? That’s where so many environmental concerns begin, don’t they? After all, a mother’s body is the first environment any of us experience. I remember thinking back in 1974, even though I wouldn’t have children for another 14 years, that perhaps my ability to have healthy babies had been compromised by drinking the most harmless thing in the world, a glass of milk.

Between then and now, I’ve had two children. I never had my breast milk tested for fire retardants. I never subjected my hair to analysis for heavy metals. I have not had my blood and urine examined to determine how many unnatural chemicals they contain.

But if I did, in all likelihood I’d discover a toxic soup of contaminants that I’ve been unwillingly exposed to and that now wait to surface in some kind of disease or cancer. Even worse, I would probably also discover a whole host of toxins – my personal “body burden” – that I have unwittingly passed on to my kids.

I started Big Green Purse as a way to protect ourselves from exposure to the toxins that cause our kids harm.  Given the enormity of the challenges facing government, it may be years or decades before we significantly reign in the pollution that makes us sick. We must continue to press for stronger environmental health and safety laws and regulations. But let us not forget: The way we spend our money is our first line of defense. 

As we observe this Mother’s Day, let’s renew our commitment to shifting our spending to products and services that offer the greatest health and safety benefits, not just for the planet, but for us and our children as well.

The post What’s in YOUR body, Mom? appeared first on Big Green Purse.

Chances are great that our daughters will pass on to our grandchildren some of the same chemical molecules they inherited from us. The estimated age by which a daughter will purge 99 percent of the inherited chemical varies depending on the chemical. It will take a day to excrete the phthalate plasticizers that soften up cosmetics, paint and plastics, but a year to dump mercury. Our daughters will be at least teenagers but perhaps senior citizens before they’re rid of the common flame retardants and stain-proofing chemicals we pass along. They would be 166 years old before they’re free of their inherited lead.

Meanwhile, their own body burden continues to increase. According to EWG’s test results, chemicals that persist in the body were found at higher levels in mothers than daughters, showing how chemicals can build up in the body over a lifetime. Mothers had an average of 1.5 to 5.2 times more pollution than their daughters for lead, methyl mercury, brominated flame retardants, and the Teflon- and Scotchgard-related perfluorochemicals PFOA and PFOS.

The EWG study, which was done on four mothers and their daughters, found that each of the eight women’s blood or urine was contaminated with an average of 35 consumer product ingredients, including flame retardants, plasticizers, and stain-proof coatings. These mixtures of compounds found in furniture, cosmetics, fabrics, and other consumer goods, have never been tested for safety. The mothers and daughters in this study join 64 other people tested in six EWG biomonitoring programs conducted between 2000 and 2006. In total, EWG biomonitoring has found 455 different pollutants, pesticides, and industrial chemicals in the bodies or cord blood of 72 different people — including 10 newborn babies with an average of 200 chemicals in each child.

“EPA studies show that children from birth to age two are 10 times more sensitive to cancer-causing chemicals than adults,” said Jane Houlihan, EWG’s vice president for research. “Scientists have found that chemicals’ toxic effects can be passed down for four generations, by causing permanent genetic changes that can be inherited. A stew of toxic chemicals is not the legacy mothers want to hand down to their children.”

We monitor the pollution in our air, our water, and even our fish. Isn’t it time we started paying attention to the pollution in our bodies?

Related Post: What’s in YOUR body, Mom?

The post A Mother’s Day Question: What Do You Have in Common with Your Daughter…or Your Own Mother? appeared first on Big Green Purse.

Chances are great that our daughters will pass on to our grandchildren some of the same chemical molecules they inherited from us. The estimated age by which a daughter will purge 99 percent of the inherited chemical varies depending on the chemical. It will take a day to excrete the phthalate plasticizers that soften up cosmetics, paint and plastics, but a year to dump mercury. Our daughters will be at least teenagers but perhaps senior citizens before they’re rid of the common flame retardants and stain-proofing chemicals we pass along. They would be 166 years old before they’re free of their inherited lead.

  Meanwhile, their own body burden continues to increase.  According to EWG’s test results, chemicals that persist in the body were found at higher levels in mothers than daughters, showing how chemicals can build up in the body over a lifetime. Mothers had an average of 1.5 to 5.2 times more pollution than their daughters for lead, methyl mercury, brominated flame retardants, and the Teflon- and Scotchgard-related perfluorochemicals PFOA and PFOS.

The EWG study, which was done on four mothers and their daughters, found that each of the eight women’s blood or urine was contaminated with an average of 35 consumer product ingredients, including flame retardants, plasticizers, and stain-proof coatings. These mixtures of compounds found in furniture, cosmetics, fabrics, and other consumer goods, have never been tested for safety.

The mothers and daughters in this study join 64 other people tested in six EWG biomonitoring programs conducted between 2000 and 2006. In total, EWG biomonitoring has found 455 different pollutants, pesticides, and industrial chemicals in the bodies or cord blood of 72 different people — including 10 newborn babies with an average of 200 chemicals in each child.

“EPA studies show that children from birth to age two are 10 times more sensitive to cancer-causing chemicals than adults,” said Jane Houlihan, EWG’s vice president for research. “Scientists have found that chemicals’ toxic effects can be passed down for four generations, by causing permanent genetic changes that can be inherited. A stew of toxic chemicals is not the legacy mothers want to hand down to their children.”

The findings were released a year ago this month at a briefing at the California State Capitol, but nothing has changed, either in terms of our exposure to these chemicals or the companies’ use of them. At the time, joining public health advocates and four of the mothers and daughters were Senate President Pro tem Don Perata, Sen. Deborah Ortiz and Assemblyman John Laird, authors and co-sponsor of SB 1379, a bill to establish the nation’s first state-level biomonitoring program to track pollution in people.

“We monitor the pollution in our air, our water, and even our fish. It’s time to start looking at the pollution in our bodies,” said Perata.

The post Do You Really Want Your Daughter to Look Like You? appeared first on Big Green Purse.