Most of us are concerned about the environment but, when it comes to activism, we usually need a specific issue to grab hold of: Save the whales, save the wetlands, global warming, pesticides. Why, then, is there no environmental campaign to save mother’s milk? We see little news stories every so often: Dioxin found in breastmilk. Mother’s milk contaminated with environmental toxins. What could be more immediate or compelling than trying to undo the pollution of a substance produced by a mother’s body for the purpose of sustaining human life?

But we don’t talk about that. If we talk at all we talk about whether it’s still safe to breastfeed. People are worried, understandably, that news about persistent organic pollutants (POPs), as ecologists call them, in breastmilk will scare mothers away from breastfeeding.

That’s the wrong discussion. Don’t ask if breastmilk is safe, ask if the world is safe. If these POPs are in breastmilk they’re everywhere - in the water, in the soil, in the air and in other foods we eat. However, since breastmilk is one rung higher on the food chain, it has greater concentrations of POPs. The higher you go up the food chain - micro-organism is eaten by bigger micro-organism which is eaten by tiny fish which is eaten by bigger fish, and so on - the greater the concentrations of POPs. Humans are up at the top, so we get the cumulative sum of environmental toxins consumed by all those organisms along the way. Moreover, these chemicals tend to accumulate in fat, and breastmilk ranges from one to five percent fat. The bottom line is that the world is polluted and one of the key places we can document that pollution is within the bodies of the women who bear and nurture our young. Dare we shy away from that?

By the way, the process of a mother transferring POPs to her baby actually begins in the womb via the placenta. The amounts are lower, but the effects may well be worse according to Sandra Steingraber, an American biologist/ecologist and breastfeeding mom.

Steingraber’s new book, Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood, very cogently and readably puts this issue right on the table where it ought to be. She calls a mother’s body the first environment, a mediator between her unborn child and the chemicals - both good and bad - in our water, food and air. Steingraber believes that environment is in danger.

In spite of her concerns, Steingraber is a passionate breastfeeding advocate and a tandem nurser of three-year-old Faith and ten-month-old Elijah. Obviously, this scientist believes that breastmilk is still healthier and safer than formula. So do I. Infant formula carries its own risks, the chief one being that no matter what they put in it, formula will never contain the antibodies and other unique health-giving properties of breastmilk. And did you know what the food industry is lobbying to put in formula these days? Aspartame, cyclamates and various food colourings, among other chemicals. (What do they want to do - make it purple, like ketchup?) In addition, although formula contains lower levels of POPs than breastmilk, some studies have shown that it contains higher levels of heavy metals like manganese and lead.

But formula is a substitute. Mama’s milk is the elemental substance that should grab our attention and passion. “I see the breastfeeding relationship as sacred,” says Steingraber. “Every woman has the right to feed her child from her body. If we have poisoned the communion between a mother and her nursing infant then we have a moral imperative to detoxify it by finding and using alternatives to PVC and other carcinogens.”

Exactly. We have not yet come to the point where women must be advised not to breastfeed. Let’s not go there. This can be changed. The same research that tracks the presence of environmental pollutants in breastmilk has also shown that when the use of chemicals like DDT is phased out, they gradually disappear from breastmilk. Obviously, talk alone will not solve this problem, but if we’re afraid to talk about it I fear we may never get to the next step where we pressure our governments to pay more attention to pollutants.

June 2002