A Poison Labeled "Drink Me"

Once upon a time, I had a baby. A sweet, soft baby, with a downy, caramel-scented head, soft pink cheeks, tiny, curled fists, and a beautiful, carefully-picked name. My baby, this tiny pink package of light wrapped snugly in a flannel blanket, had great trouble with the idea or the mechanics or something about breast-feeding. We struggled. We cried. We consulted consultants and clinics. We fed by tube and cup and finger. And finally, finally I gave in. I made a promise. To myself, to Pumpkinpie. I would pump for a year, I would feed her breastmilk for that year, come hell or high water. I would do what was best for her. She would have mother's milk. And so she did. For a full year, I pumped nourishment from my breast, put it into bottles, warmed it to the temperature that my body would deliver, and fed her the best thing I could. I was proud to be doing it, inconvenient as it was. Proud to be doing what was best for her.

I know friends, acquaintances, blog-authors, who have had struggles of one sort or another with the feeding of their own children, too. Low milk supply, tricky latch, lactose intolerance, preemies, medical interventions, adoptive children, and a host of other reasons for this painful difficulty. These mothers, too, have done their best for their children. Pumped or breastfed as much as they could, supplemented with formula where needed, or formula fed entirely, as their situations allowed or demanded. Again, these mothers have struggled to give their children the best that they could give. And again, it often came in a bottle. The best nutrition they could find, delivered the best way that they could.

And now, in the past couple of years, studies have discovered that Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in most consumer plastics, including baby bottles and popular Nalgene bottles (which many people buy as "safe" alternatives to other drinking containers), not to mention the lining of canned food and even some dental fillings, has significant impact on humans, even in low doses. Think about that. A chemical, in those bottles of precious, life-giving nourishment. In the bottles so many of us tote because drinking water is "healthy."

Worse, this is not a relatively benign chemical. Not even close. These studies are showing that even low doses can act as hormone disruptors and may "alter brain chemistry and structure, behavior, the immune system, enzyme activity, the male reproductive system, and the female reproductive system in a variety of animals, including snails, fish, frogs, and mammals." Mammals - like us. That's a lot of effects. A lot of scary effects. [quoted from the peer-reviewed journal article: Frederick S. vam Saal and Claude Hughes, "An Extensive New Literature Concerning Low-Dose Effects of Bisphenol A Shows The Need for a New Risk Assessment." Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 113, no. 8, Aug. 2005] There is also some evidence linking the chemical to breast and prostate cancers, and possibly even obesity and hyperactivity. Scarier still, studies have shown some 95% of people in the US have been exposed to the chemical (and by extension, almost certainly that number will bear out in Canada).

The body of information has become greater in the past couple of years, the voices louder, and now, this year, a petition has begun asking the government to ban the use of this chemical, so dangerous to people on so many fronts. A class action suit has been launched against manufacturers of baby bottles. Scientists warn against the dangers of the chemical. Canada's government has placed BPA on a list of some 200 chemicals to study, but let's face it, these things move slowly. Why wait for another study, when so many have shown disturbing results? Some evidence of hormone concerns with the chemical have been noted as early as the 1930s, and yet the fact is, the "looking into it" approach taken so far has yielded no action in terms of actually limiting or outright banning the chemical from use.

And so we continue. We continue to ingest it in our soup, to drink it in our bottled water, ironically chosen for lower levels of chemicals, to feed it to our babies when we cannot feed them from the breast. The most vulnerable, the infants, the young child clutching the sippy cup, are sadly, among those most regularly exposed. Mothers, doing their best to feed their babies in the best way they are able, buying plastic bottles instead of glass to avoid the dangers of breakage, unwittingly expose thier own children, whom they most seek to protect, to hidden dangers. How horrible a choice to have made, how guilt-inducing to remember bottle after bottle fed to your babe, cradled safely in your arms, how terrifying to contemplate the dangers, the potential for harm that now lies in your child's body.

We know now. The evidence from study after study is pouring in, voice after voice is being raised in protest and insistence. We can turn this around, protect our children and ourselves from further exposure, put a halt to the brewing of more and greater health troubles as a result of this toxin. We can ban the use of it without waiting another year or two or three, without waiting for further study to add to the mounting pile of evidence. We know already that BPA is to be avoided, but it is still a tricky thing to do, with so many products on the market still using it. We can make it easy for all consumers to eat and drink and feed their children safely, even those who don't have the knowledge, or the extra time and money to hunt down the safer alternatives. We can help protect our own citizens from a future of cancers and fertility troubles. We can stop production of plastics with BPA now.

I, for one, have signed a petition asking for this, and I add my voice here, alongside the voices of many other bloggers spurred on by MBT's BlogHers Act Canada challenge, so that any who have not heard of this can go, add your name, be aware of the danger and make it known to others. We can only hope that all the talk about the power of blogging may translate into someone listening, someone sensing that there is a groundswell against this continued danger. Let's make it loud, so that we might be heard. Protecting our children, giving them our best is, after all, what mothers do.