You have probably heard that you should prevent your children from being exposed to lead in house paint and on imported toys. No amount of lead exposure is safe. Any lead exposure, in whatever system of the body it lands, causes harm.

Preventing lead exposure in children and pregnant women is especially important because of the permanent neurological damage it can cause, impairing learning and behavior for life.

Where Are Children Exposed to Lead?

I didn’t realize how common lead exposure through drinking water is until I read my local water report for this past year and paid attention to the fact that my water filter specifically filters out lead. I thought exposures came mostly through lead-based paints, but lead is more pervasive in our lives than that because of all of the ways lead has been used in industrial society. The word “plumbing,” for example, comes from the Latin word for lead, plumbum, because lead pipes were so common. Have you ever played Clue (or Cluedo)? We still use lead pipes in the game.

Lead is pervasive.

These are just some of the ways your children can be exposed to lead.

• Lead-based paints in houses built before 1960s in Canada or painted before 1978 in the U.S.
• Plumbing installed before 1990 in Canada or 1986 in the U.S.
• ANY plumbing fixtures, since even “lead-free” fixtures can contain up to 8% lead
• Any water that moves through plumbing fixtures, especially in older houses
• Almost all food, which can pick up traces of lead from soil an air
• Canned food, because of lead in solder (though Canadian manufacturers have eliminated lead from solder)
• Air, since industrial emissions can put lead into our air, though banning leaded gasoline in Canada in 1990 has meant almost undetectable levels of lead in the air
• Dust from industrial emissions, from lead-paint, or even from from rocks that include lead naturally
• Soil where lead dust has settled
• Shoes that pick up settled lead dust
• Carpet where people have walked with lead dust on their shoes
• Leaded crystal, especially with acidic drinks like fruit juice or wine
• Lead-glazed ceramics or glassware, especially with acidic food or drinks
• Fumes from candles with lead in the wicks
• Fumes from burning wood with lead-paint, batteries, or other waste
• Lead or lead solder used in created stained glass and other crafts
• Hunting with lead shot or fishing with lead weights
• Wild game shot with lead shot
• Contaminated clothes brought home after being worn at work at a foundry, refinery, or smelter
• Breastmilk, since mothers exposed to lead can pass it on to their babies

I’m sure you get the idea. Am I suggesting you not exposure your child to breastmilk? Absolutely not. I just want you to understand how lead is everywhere. To limit exposures, we have to be smart about where lead has come from.

What Does Lead Exposure Look Like?

It isn’t always easy to recognize symptoms of lead exposure until there is serious damage done, but symptoms and effects can include nervous system damage, cognitive impairment or impairment of cognitive development, developmental delays, aggression, attention problems, hearing impairment, sight impairment, headaches, metabolism and digestive issues. For a long, alarming list of potential impacts of lead poisoning along with the cited studies that have found the problems, see Lead Action News from Australia.

Prevent Lead Exposure in Your Children

The smartest approach to lead exposure is to prevent it before children or developing fetuses are exposed. Considering how common lead is in our environment now and how dire the consequences of exposure are, it’s difficult not to be discouraged, but you can still take steps to prevent your children’s exposure.

• Understand where exposures happen and avoid them
• When you are pregnant, especially, stay away from all of the likely places of lead exposure
• Have your drinking water tested
• Filter your drinking water for lead
• Eat an iron-rich and calcium-rich diet for yourself and your children to prevent lead absorption
• Have a professional remove lead paint from your house to limit dust and exposure
• Replace lead soldered plumbing
• Damp dust to prevent exposure to settling lead
• Vacuum frequently
• Remove shoes at the door
• Teach your children what to avoid and why
• When you have young children, watch what goes in their mouths.
• Buy toys, especially toys for young children, made from natural materials by manufacturers you trust.

Because you need to prevent the exposure when your children are quite small, try to get their help by teaching them what to avoid. The New York State Department of Health has developed a curriculum to help preschool children and their families understand the risks and avoidance of lead poisoning. Some of the songs, activities, crafts, and stories could be used effectively at the family level.

Image © Inna Felker | Dreamstime.com

• 

“We’ve long cautioned consumers to avoid extreme heat and cooling for plastics, to discard scratched and worn plastics and we feel like this (study) validates one of our many concerns,” she says.

According to the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, this is a problem that can be solved.

• 

What better time to start our Focus on Plastic. Be sure to see today’s post on plastics hit you coming and going.

• 

We need to face the costs of plastics at both ends of the chain: in oil and gas exploration and in the toxic effects on our lives.

What Is Plastic Made Of?

Chart my husband learned from in school

The news is full of heartbreaking stories about the consequences of oil and gas exploration and production. Since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I see more headlines about “our addiction to oil.” We need to expand that. When we talk about breaking the addiction to oil, we have to talk about plastics. Oil should not be mistaken as just an issue of gasoline and transportation. Our dependence on plastics for everyday household products are a huge part of our need to push to find new sources of oil and gas without adequate safety nets.

When we see photos of tar balls on beaches and oil slicks covering hundreds of miles, we need to consider how we are working to lessen our dependence of petroleum products. When we see costs of seafood go up dramatically, we need to consider whether the alleged convenience of throwaway plastics has been worth those externalized costs.

I’ve just been shocked and almost overwhelmed to see the consequences of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. We all need to make the connection between petrochemical products, including plastics, and the devastation that we are seeing on the news.

What Is So Bad About Plastic?

Beyond the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, if we can even come close to beyond that, are health and environmental issues that follow from exposure to some plastics.

There are two approaches to the safety of plastics, the cautious approach that says it’s important to prove safety before use and the more common approach that it’s important to prove risk before removal from use. In general, safety advocates and environmentalists are taking the cautious approach and business and regulators are taking the risky approach. More and more, though, the cautious approach is becoming the mainstream approach.

In just the past two weeks, I have seen several major efforts by mainstream news to document toxic plastics. 60 Minutes ran a story on phthalates, the plastic softeners that make flexible plastic flexible (“Phthalates: Are They Safe?”); The New Yorker ran a story on BPA (bisphenol A) and other toxic plastics (“The Plastic Panic”); and yesterday I noticed that CNN is running a special on plastics (“Toxic America”). Once the story has hit these news outlets, people are aware and the approach tips far more toward the cautious approach. I’m even starting to hear more people in the mainstream calling for banning the more suspicious plastics from use.

Oil & gas and plastic industry lobbyists in these documentaries say that either the materials are safe because it hasn’t been proven otherwise or the regulations allow use of the materials so they’re just fine. They imply that there is no proof of risk or harm, but the scientific evidence showing risk and harm is building. The U.S. President’s Cancer Panel, for example, issued a report recommending strengthening U.S. federal chemical laws, increasing funding for research, and stepping up enforcement. The frank approach of the study is alarming, as it should be.

The Panel was particularly concerned to find that the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated. With nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States, many of which are used by millions of Americans in their daily lives and are un- or understudied and largely unregulated, exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread. One such ubiquitous chemical, bisphenol A (BPA), is still found in many consumer products and remains unregulated in the United States, despite the growing link between BPA and several diseases, including various cancers. “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now,” p5.

Parents should understand that the burden of environmental toxins, including plastics, is not shared equally. “[C]hildren are far more vulnerable to environmental toxins and radiation than adults” because of their smaller body mass and their rapid development. “To a disturbing extent,” the panel writes, “babies are born ‘pre-polluted.’” This pre-pollution is causing alarming changes, particularly in boys as soft plastics (phthalates) mimic some human hormones and have been shown to disrupt normal development, feminizing some males. (Of the recent stories, the 60 Minutes pieces goes into this in the most detail.)

Our use of plastics in so many products has been a giant experiment on the human race and on the earth. The data from that experiment are coming in, and the results are not good for us.

Plastic may be pervasive in our lives, but WE make the choices. In most cases (I’m excepting many medical situations—for now), we can use alternatives that don’t carry as many risks.

Special thanks to Taina of Plastic Manners. She is blogging her efforts to give up plastics for a year. She doesn’t have children, but she gets a lot of comments on her blog from parents. She encouraged us to cover the effort to eliminate plastics from babies’ and children’s lives.

Image © Bidouze Stéphane | Dreamstime.com

• 

For two weeks this month I am going to focus on plastics: why we need to become far more aware of plastics, how to make some of the small and easy changes, and then how we might approach some of the bigger but quite necessarily changes we need to make to rid ourselves of products that hurt us coming and going.

• 

Do you know which cosmetics are safe during pregnancy? Do you know which skin care products are safe for your baby? What you don’t know can hurt you and your baby.

When I was reading materials for my post last week on Mother-made Baby Care Cosmetics, I found a fascinating statement.

All Earth Mama Angel Baby products are now rated “zero” on the Skin Deep database, a guide to cosmetics and personal care products from the Environmental Working Group. “We know of no other company that manufactures products for pregnancy or baby with an entire product line rated zero,” said Melinda Olson, CEO and founder.
“Earth Mama Angel Baby Rated Zero on Skin Deep Database,” Organic Products Retailer, September 2009.

It is extremely helpful to parents and parents-to-be to see all ingredients and all concerns, even minor concerns, listed in one place. Seeing a whole line of products with green zeroes is very reassuring.

The Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database is a project of the Environmental Working Group. I follow a lot of the good work they are doing to compile data that helps consumers make informed choices. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and the Skin Deep Database cover just one of their areas of research. Their goal is simple. They want to eliminate “the use of chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects, and other health problems.”

Which companies are making safe cosmetics and baby care products? They list companies that have signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, pledging to meet strict standards. They go through a few clear steps to be sure that you know the ingredients in their products.

What’s the Problem?

Because of the levels of environmental toxins, we are exposed to toxic chemicals through the air and water. We also, mostly unknowingly, bring toxic chemicals into our homes through nearly every consumer product, including those that we put directly on our skin. We can’t always avoid the air and water, but we can make informed choices about cosmetics and other consumer products.

It helps to know the chemicals of concern and check labels. Only today I found myself buying a major brand cosmetic (deodorant!) for my son rather than the eco healthy brand because only the plain jane big name did not have one of the ingredients I was trying to avoid. We didn’t get antiperspirant, just deodorant, hoping that would avoid some problems. I wish I’d checked the database before I went because the eco healthy brand got a score of 2 in the database, and the big name clean as a whistle brand got a score of 6. Now I wish I had just worked harder to convince him to use a crystal. Lesson learned: check the database while you are in the store if you are mobile.

Pregnancy

In pregnancy, the chemicals that have been absorbed by the body of the mother will be passed on to the developing fetus. That is an unfortunate and unavoidable fact. We as mothers can at least avoid adding to that chemical load during the delicate time of development.

Avoid in particular

• parabens because they are oestrogen mimics
• phthalates because of potential premature birth
• ultrafine particles because they can enter the lymphatic system
• accutane or retinoic acid because of potential heart defects
• high-dose vitamin A (anti-aging) because of potential birth defects

Keep in mind that I’m referring to cosmetics in this post, but any toxic chemicals in cleaning products, paint, air fresheners, and on and on can still cause problems. Without panicking or becoming paranoid, become aware of your choices and the ingredients most important to avoid.

Baby

With babies, the issue is again development as well as avoidance of the toxic tipping point that could cause “serious diseases and conditions from childhood cancer to autism, ADHD, learning deficits, infertility and birth defects.”

The list of chemicals that can be harmful to babies and children is at least several hundred long. Browse the Skin Deep baby care section for a long, long read. Once you see all of the alarming toxic ingredients in so many baby products, recall the zero rating of Earth Mama Angel Baby products

With babies, just stick with brands that have signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics or check each product for toxic chemicals before you commit and buy. Do the research first, and you will have a much better chance of helping your child avoid adding to the toxins they carry just by living in a toxic industrial world.

Image © Hughstoneian | Dreamstime.com

• 

Laboratory tests commissioned by Environmental Working Group have, for the first time, detected bisphenol A (BPA), a plastic component and synthetic estrogen, in umbilical cord blood of American infants.

9 out of 10 Tested Had BPA

Resources

• “Minority Cord Blood,” Environmental Working Group. Includes tips for a healthy pregnancy.
• “BPA found in 90% of infants in new study,” Fast Company.

•